Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi death

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi dead

He was not on the list.

Abū Bakr al-Baghdadi al-Qurayshi was the Iraqi-born leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The group has been designated as a terrorist organisation by the United Nations, as well as by the European Union and many individual states, while Baghdadi was considered a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the United States until his death in October 2019. In June 2014, he was chosen caliph of ISIL by the Shura Council, who were representing those members of the Islamic State qualified to elect a caliph.

Rising to prominence in ISIL after his detainment with Al Qaeda commanders at the American Camp Bucca in Iraq, Baghdadi would become directly involved in ISIL's atrocities and human rights violations. These include the genocide of Yazidis in Iraq, extensive sexual slavery, organized rape, floggings, and systematic executions. He directed terrorist activities and massacres. He embraced brutality as part of the organization's propaganda efforts, producing videos displaying sexual slavery and executions via hacking, stoning, and burning. al-Baghdadi himself was a rapist who kept several personal sex slaves.

From 2011, a reward of US$10 million was offered for Baghdadi by the U.S. State Department, increasing to $25 million in 2017, for information or intelligence on his whereabouts to enable capture, dead or alive. On 27 October 2019, he killed himself by detonating a suicide vest during the Barisha raid, conducted by the U.S. 75th Ranger Regiment and the U.S. Delta Force, in Syria's northwestern Idlib Province, according to a statement by U.S. President Donald Trump. The commander of the United States Central Command, General Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., stated that al-Baghdadi also killed two children when he exploded his vest and was buried at sea after being offered Islamic funeral rites.

On 31 October 2019, ISIS confirmed that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was dead, and named Abu Ibrahim al Hashimi al-Qurayshi, about whom little is known, as his replacement.