Widow of ISIS leader reveals details life together in new interview

The first wife of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (pictured) has shared details of their life in a rare interview from prison – expressing her shock at the ‘inhumane’ atrocities committed by the jihadist group. Widow Umm Hudaifa was married to the ISIS leader while he oversaw ISIS’s vicious rule over large parts of Syria and Iraq, which committed a genocide against the Yazidi people and took thousands of women as slaves, while also killing hostages and civilians.

In an interview with the BBC, Hudaifa – who is being investigated for terror-related crimes – claimed that she was living in Raqqa, Syria, when her husband declared himself leader. She explained how she would often spend time apart from her husband, who was in hiding as a wanted leader of the extremist jihadist group. Just days before, her sons were collected to be taught how to swim in the Euphrates.

After turning the TV on one day, she said she got a ‘huge surprise’ after seeing her husband addressing the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in the Iraqi city Mosul, in which he declared himself the as the head of the Islamic caliphate. She was shocked to discover her sons were in Mosul with her husband. ‘He told me they were going on a trip to teach the boys how to swim,’ she told the BBC.

Hudaifa also described ISIS atrocities as a ‘huge shock’ and ‘inhumane’, adding that they ‘crossed a line of humanity’. She added that she ‘felt ashamed’ of the violence against the Yazidis.

The widow is under investigation for her suspected role in ISIS and the crimes committed by the terror organisation and is currently being held in a Baghdad prison. She has denied her involvement in the sexual enslavement of women and girls and claims she was a victim herself and tried to escape from her husband, who she married in 1999.

Her husband, the Iraq-born ISIS leader Al-Baghdadi became known on the world stage after ISIS ruled through northern Iraq and northeastern Syria over a decade ago, before he detonated a [self-murder] vest as US Army Special Ops forces closed in on his hideout in northwestern Syria on October 27, 2019. In 2014, he made a rare appearance in which he declared himself the caliph, the ruler of the Muslim community. Hudaifa asserted that when she first married her husband, he was ‘conservative but open minded’ and claimed he was not an extremist.

However she said after al-Baghdadi was held in Camp Bucca in 2004 following the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2004, he changed, claiming that he suffered from psychological issues. Al-Baghdadi was reportedly arrested after founding a militant Sunni group to fight American and allied Western occupation forces. He spent his year-long detention with many other men who would later become senior figures in ISIS and other jihadist groups. Although he did not tell her directly, Hudaifa believes her husband was subjected to ‘sexual punishment’.

Hudaifa added that upon his return, she began to suspect her husband belonged to a militant group, as they often moved house and had fake identities. She then asked for a divorce, but stayed with him as she could not agree to his condition that she give up their children. ‘We moved to the Idlib countryside in Syria in January 2012, and there it became absolutely clear to me that he was the emir [leader],’ she said.

The barbarity of the militant groups that formed ISIS was already prominent, but in 2014, the bloodshed became more widespread. This included ISIS’s genocide against Iraq’s Yazidi minority , as well as the murder, punished, kidnapping and enslavement of civilians. ‘To spill blood unjustly is a horrendous thing and in that regard they crossed the line of humanity’, Hudaifa told the BBC. She also claimed she challenged her husband about his involvement in the killings of thousands, telling him that him that ‘according to Islamic law there are other things that could have been done, like guiding them towards repentance’.

But in 2014, nine Yazidi girls, ranging from the ages of nine to 30 were brought to Hudaifa’s house, which she claimed only stayed there for a few days. A woman named Soad, who was enslaved, raped and sold seven times, and her father Hamid, have filed a civil lawsuit against Hudaifa for her involvement in the kidnapping and enslavement of Yazidi girls. ‘She was responsible for everything. She made the selections – this one to serve her, that one to serve her husband… and my sister was one of those girls.’ ‘She is the wife of the criminal Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and she is a criminal just like him’, Soad told the BBC.

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