Umm Hudayfa was Baghdadi's first spouse and was married to him throughout the interval when ISIS brutally dominated giant components of Syria and Iraq. She is at present being investigated for terrorism-related crimes and is being held in a jail in Iraq.
In the summertime of 2014, Umm Hudayfe was dwelling together with her husband in Raqqa, then the ISIS stronghold in Syria.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the needed chief of the novel jihadist group, continuously frolicked elsewhere, and on one event he despatched a guard house to choose up his two younger sons.
“He mentioned they have been occurring a visit to show kids the right way to swim,” says Ummu Hudayfe.
There was a tv at house that he watched secretly. “I’d open it when he wasn't house,” she says. Baghdadi thought the tv was not working. He says he has been lower off from the world and has not been allowed to look at tv or use different know-how, akin to a cell phone, since 2007.
He says that a couple of days after the guard took the youngsters, he turned on the tv and encountered a “huge shock.” She noticed her husband give a speech on the Al-Nuri Grand Mosque within the northern Iraqi metropolis of Mosul and declare himself the pinnacle of the first-ever declared Islamic caliphate. This was only a few weeks after his fighters took management of the area.
The photographs of Al-Baghdadi showing in public for the primary time in years, together with his lengthy beard, black gown and the picture of him demanding allegiance from Muslims, have been watched everywhere in the world and marked an necessary second for ISIS, which ravaged Iraq and Syria.
Umm Hudayfe says she was shocked to study that her sons have been in Mosul together with her as an alternative of studying to swim within the Euphrates.
He describes his function in ISIS and the state of affairs within the crowded jail within the Iraqi capital Baghdad the place he’s being held whereas Iraqi officers examine the group's crimes. It's noisy as inmates accused of crimes together with drug use and intercourse work are moved across the jail and meals deliveries are created from exterior.
We discover a quiet place within the library and speak for practically two hours. Throughout our dialog, she portrays herself as a sufferer making an attempt to flee her husband and denies involvement in any of ISIS's brutal actions.
This assertion by Hudayfe is in sharp distinction to what was informed within the case filed by Yazidis who have been kidnapped and raped by ISIS members. Yazidis accuse him of collaborating in the usage of kidnapped women and girls as sexual slaves.
He doesn't lookup even as soon as throughout the interview. Her black chador solely exhibits the a part of her withstand her nostril.
Umm Hudayfe was born in 1976 right into a conservative Iraqi household and in 1999 she married Ibrahim Avad al-Bedri, who was later recognized by the pseudonym Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Al-Badri had accomplished his diploma in Sharia (Islamic regulation) on the College of Baghdad, and Hudayfe says he was then “pious however not excessive…conservative however open-minded.”
In 2004, a 12 months after the US-led invasion of Iraq, American forces detained al-Baghdadi and held him, together with many others who would turn into senior figures in ISIS and different jihadist teams, within the detention middle at Camp Bucca within the south for practically a 12 months.
Hudayfe claims that Baghdadi modified within the years after his launch; “He grew to become irritable and had outbursts of anger,” he says.
Others who know Baghdadi additionally say that he joined Al Qaeda earlier than his time in Bucca, however in accordance with Hudayfe, this era was a turning level during which Baghdadi more and more moved in direction of extremes.
“He began having psychological issues,” he says. When she requested why, he informed her that he was “uncovered to one thing he couldn't perceive.”
Though he didn’t say so overtly, Hudayfe believes that Baghdadi “was subjected to sexual torture whereas in custody.” Images that emerged that 12 months from Abu Ghraib, one other US-run jail in Iraq, confirmed prisoners being pressured to mimic sexual acts and pose in degrading poses.
We conveyed this declare to the US Division of Protection Pentagon, however haven’t but acquired a response.
He says he started to wonder if she belonged to a militant group. “When he got here house, when he was having a shower or when he went to sleep, I’d search for his garments.
“I even searched his physique to see if there have been any bruises or wounds… I used to be confused,” he says, however explains that he couldn't discover something.
“I informed him on the time, 'you're off observe'… which despatched him right into a match of rage.”
She says they moved home continuously, used pretend identities, and her husband married a second spouse. Umm Hudayfe says that she needed a divorce, however she didn’t settle for her husband's situation of giving up their kids, so she stayed with him.
As Iraq fell right into a bloody sectarian conflict that lasted from 2006 to 2008, she now not had any doubt that her husband had joined Sunni jihadist teams. Baghdadi grew to become chief of the Islamic State of Iraq in 2010. Based in 2006, this group was the umbrella group of Iraqi jihadist teams.
“In January 2012, we moved to the countryside of Idlib, Syria, and there we met his emir. [lider] “I positively understood that it was,” says Umm Hudayfe.
The Islamic State of Iraq was one of many teams that joined forces to type the broader Islamic State group, which declared a caliphate two years later – an Islamic state ruled in accordance with Sharia by somebody thought of God's consultant on earth.
He says that at the moment, Baghdadi began sporting Afghan garments, grew a beard and carried a gun.
When the safety state of affairs in northwestern Syria deteriorated throughout the civil conflict, they moved east to the town of Raqqa, which might later be thought of the de facto capital of the ISIS “caliphate.” She was dwelling right here when she noticed her husband on tv.
The brutality of the teams that got here collectively to type ISIS was already recognized, however in 2014 and 2015 the brutality grew to become extra widespread and horrific.
A United Nations investigation crew mentioned it had discovered proof that ISIS dedicated genocide towards Iraq's Yazidi minority and that the group had dedicated crimes towards humanity, together with homicide, torture, kidnapping and enslavement.
ISIS broadcast its atrocities, such because the beheading of hostages and the burning of a Jordanian pilot, on social media.
He massacred roughly 1,700 Iraqi cadets, largely Shiites, who have been returning house from the Speicher army base north of Baghdad.
Some ladies who went to stay with ISIS now say they didn't perceive what they have been moving into on the time, so I requested Umm Hudayfe about her views on the time. He says that even then he couldn’t have a look at the photographs, describing the brutality as “an excellent shock, inhumane” and including that “unjustly shedding blood is a horrible factor and on this respect they crossed the road of humanity.”
Umm Hudayfe states that she challenged her husband for having the “blood of these harmless folks” on his palms and informed him, “In response to Islamic regulation, there are different issues that may be completed, akin to main them to repentance.”
She describes how her husband communicated with ISIS leaders from his laptop computer.
He stored the pc locked in a briefcase. “I attempted to get on the pc to seek out out what was occurring, however I used to be ignorant about know-how and it stored asking me for a password,” he says.
He says he tried to flee, however armed males at a checkpoint refused to let him go and despatched him again house.
As for the conflict, she says that, so far as she is aware of, her husband “didn’t take part in any battle or conflict,” including that he was in Raqqa when ISIS took management of Mosul and later went to Mosul to provide a speech.
Shortly after this sermon, Al-Baghdadi married off their 12-year-old daughter, Omayma, to a buddy named Mansur, who was chargeable for taking good care of the household's affairs. Umm Hudayfe says she tried to stop this however was ignored.
An Iraqi safety supply informed us that Omayma had been married as soon as earlier than, when she was eight years outdated, to a Syrian ISIS spokesman. Nevertheless, he mentioned that the primary marriage was organized in order that the person may enter the home when al-Baghdadi was not at house, and that the connection had no sexual dimension.
Then, in August 2014, Umm Hudayfe gave delivery to a different daughter named Nasibe, who had a congenital coronary heart defect. This incident coincided with Mansur bringing house 9 Yazidi women and girls aged between 9 and 30.
They have been only a few of the 1000’s of Yazidi ladies and youngsters enslaved by ISIS; Hundreds of others have been killed.
Umm Hudayfe says she was shocked and “ashamed.”
There have been two younger women within the group named Samar and Zena (not their actual names). Umm Hudayfe says they solely stayed at her house in Raqqa for a couple of days earlier than transferring. Nevertheless, later the household moved to Mosul and Samar reappeared and stayed with them for about two months.
I tracked down Samar's father, Hamid, who tearfully recalled the second he was kidnapped.
He mentioned he had two wives and that they, together with their 26 kids, two brothers and their households, have been kidnapped from the city of Hansur in Sinjar. He fled to the close by mountains.
Six of their kids, together with Samar, are nonetheless lacking. Some returned after ransoms have been paid, whereas others returned house after the areas the place they have been held have been liberated.
The opposite daughter, Zena, is her niece and is considered caught in northern Syria. Zena's sister, Suad, had not met Umm Hudayfe, however she was enslaved, raped and bought seven occasions.
Hamid and Suad filed a lawsuit towards Umm Hudayfe on the grounds that she cooperated within the kidnapping and enslavement of Yazidi women. They don’t imagine he’s a helpless sufferer and wish him to be sentenced to loss of life.
“She was chargeable for all the pieces. She made the alternatives – this one will serve her, this one will serve her husband… and my sister was a type of women,” Suad says, basing this on the testimonies of different victims who returned house.
“She is the spouse of the felony Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and he or she is a felony identical to him.”
We play Umm Hudayfe the recording of our interview with Suad and he or she says, “I don’t deny that my husband is a felony,” however provides that he’s “very sorry for what occurred to them” and denies the accusations towards him.
Umm Hudayfe says that shortly after, in January 2015, she met briefly with Kayla Mueller, a US help employee who was kidnapped and died in captivity after being held hostage for 18 months.
The circumstances surrounding Kayla's loss of life are nonetheless unknown. On the time, ISIS claimed that Kayla was killed in a Jordanian airstrike, however the US has at all times disputed this and an Iraqi safety supply has now informed us that she was killed by ISIS.
In 2019, US forces raided al-Baghdadi's hideout in northwestern Syria together with a few of his household. When Baghdadi was trapped in a tunnel, he detonated his explosive vest, killing himself and his two kids, and two of his 4 wives have been killed within the battle.
However Umm Hudayfe was not there – she was dwelling in Turkey underneath an assumed identify and was arrested in 2018. He was deported again to Iraq in February this 12 months and has been held in jail ever since; authorities are investigating his function in ISIS.
His eldest daughter, Umayma, is in jail with him, whereas 12-year-old Fatima stays in a detention middle the place youngsters are held. One in all his sons died in a Russian airstrike close to Homs in Syria, the opposite died in a tunnel together with his father; The youngest little one lives in an orphanage.
After we're completed speaking, he appears up and I can see his total face for a quick second, however his expression doesn't give something away. Because the intelligence officer takes her away, she begs for extra details about their youngest little one. Now he sits in his cell ready to listen to if he’ll face felony costs.
