Interview five years after death
Wife of ex-IS leader Al-Baghdadi: “He was obsessed with women”
February 16, 2024, 3:48 p.m
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From 1999 until his killing in 2019, Asma Mohammed was the first wife of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. She is currently in prison in Iraq. In an interview, Mohammed now talks about her ex-husband and his private life with women.
The former leader of the terrorist organization Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and other IS leaders were, according to one of his wives, “obsessed with women.” The “caliphate” has been transformed into a state for women, said Asma Mohammed, the ex-leader’s first wife, in an interview with the Arabic television channel Al-Hadath on Thursday evening.
Al-Baghdadi and his organization were guided by a lust that “went beyond the limits of humanity.” Al-Baghdadi kept more than ten Yazidi women as slaves. He also married a 13-year-old girl from Iraq. The former IS chief had daughters of the same age. Foreign women are also said to have played an important role in recruiting fighters, said Mohammed.
According to their statements, the US aid worker Kayla Mueller was also said to have been one of Al-Baghdadi’s slaves. Mueller was kidnapped by IS in 2013 and died in captivity. Mohammed went on to say that she had criticized her husband for his treatment of women and his keeping of slaves. In the summer of 2014, Al-Baghdadi, as the leader of IS, declared a “caliphate” in large areas of Iraq and the neighboring civil war-torn country of Syria.
The terrorist organization controlled the areas for years. In August 2014, ISIS invaded the Sinjar region of Iraq and captured thousands of Yazidi women to turn them into sex slaves for the jihadists. The extremists have now lost their territory again. However, IS cells are still active in both countries. US special forces killed Al-Baghdadi in Syria in autumn 2019. Asma Mohammed was married to Al-Baghdadi since 1999. She is currently in prison in Iraq.