Report: Daesh leader revealed fellow jihadists’ identities to US

The current leader of Daesh provided the names of 68 Al-Qaeda jihadists to the US in 2008, declassified intelligence files cited by the Times claim.

Amir Mohammed Abdul Rahman Al-Mawla passed the information to US intelligence when he was arrested in Iraq in 2008, identifying jihadists responsible for plotting assassinations, kidnappings and bombings.

At least one of the men identified was later killed by a US airstrike.

Others who were unveiled by the now-Daesh leader included the head of the military, administrative, media, Sharia and security sections of the terror organisation, according to a report by Agence France Presse (AFP).

Amir Al-Mawla not only provided names, according to the Times, but supplied details of each individual’s role within Al-Qaeda, their mobile phone numbers and information about their physical appearance.

The now-Daesh leader also “either provided or confirmed” his, his wife and his son’s identities to US intelligence during his detention in Camp Bucca in 2008, using Iraqi paperwork, AFP said.

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The declassified documents were released yesterday by the Combating Terrorism Centre at West Point, a research group attached to the US military academy at the same location.

Amir Al-Mawla became the leader of Daesh, under the name Abu Ibrahim Al Hashimi Al Qurashi, last October after former head Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was killed during a raid conducted by US forces.

Born in Mahalabiyeh, Iraq, Al-Mawla was an officer in Saddam Hussein’s army before attending and graduating from the Islamic Sciences College in Mosul.

He was later a founding member of Daesh, joining the group in 2014. He had reportedly turned to jihadism after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

For some time, according to the declassified documents, Al-Mawla was Al-Baghdadi’s speechwriter, as well as an imam at a mosque in Mosul before he ascended the group’s leadership.

The now-Daesh leader was also allegedly part of the leadership group that ordered the mass slaughter and enslavement of Iraq’s Yazidi minority in 2014.

A $10 million bounty, up from last year’s $5 million reward, for information leading to the capture of the Daesh leader was announced by Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State, in June.

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