ISIS leader Al-Baghdadi is hiding in one of just four locations
ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s location has been narrowed down to just four locations after the terrorist group released a propaganda video featuring him for the first time in five years.
Iraqi prime minister Adel Abdel Mahdi said the purported appearance by the jihadist group’s elusive supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi showed him in what appeared to be a ‘very simple and isolated’ location.
Mahdi did not confirm which country al-Baghdadi was in, but Iraqi security adviser Hisham al-Hashemi said officials had narrowed his whereabouts from 17 to a possible four locations.
Speaking in Berlin during a visit, Mahdi added that the world’s most wanted man did not seem to be among his followers, as in the video announcing the birth of the ‘caliphate’ in Iraq and Syria in 2014.
The group lost its remaining territory in the Syrian town of Baghouz in March, but Mahdi warned the so-called Islamic State ‘has not completely disappeared but suffered painful blows’.
He cautioned that IS ‘will try to rebuild trust among its fighters, will try to launch further operations’ like the Sri Lanka April 21 attacks which killed more than 250 people.
‘Daesh was broken, but if little cells are left, it could reactivate and resurface and commit painful attacks,’ he added, according to interpreted remarks.
Similarly, German chancellor Angela Merkel said the video was a sign that ‘we will remain occupied for some time to come with the question of how IS can finally be defeated’.
The speaker in the 18-minute video, a man with a long grey beard that appeared dyed with henna, sat in a room with a Kalashnikov assault rifle leaning against the wall behind him.
He was identified as Baghdadi by both SITE, which tracks IS activity, and Hisham al-Hashemi, an Iraqi expert for the group.
Meanwhile, a French IT expert said Baghdadi took a risk in broadcasting the video, but added that IS probably has specialists able to cover any tracks.
‘Daesh has a specialist cyber brigade, they’re being tracked by security services. They know how to use multiple filters before distributing something,’ said Gregoire Pouget of cybersecurity NGO Nothing2Hide.
‘They are not idiots, these masking tools are easy to use.’
Source: Daily Mail
