Reports again emerged Tuesday that the IS’s Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been killed. In April 2010, news that Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, his predecessor as emir of Islamic State of Iraq, had died emerged for the umpteenth time
Fictional terrorist?
A New York Times report then quipped, “The arrest or death of (Abu Omar) Baghdadi has been reported so many times that it has become a macabre joke about the murkiness of Iraq’s security and government credibility.” In 2007, a US military official even claimed Abu Omar did not exist
Greatest trick the Devil ever pulled
The US official said the information came from a terrorist called Khalid al-Mashadani, a spokesperson of the Islamic State of Iraq. But it turned out that the group had pulled a Keyser Soze—the villain played by Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects who says, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”
“Mashadani had told his adversaries what they wanted to hear, while protecting the identity of his new emir in what can only be described as one of the most successful deception operations in recent times,” writes Craig Whiteside, now a visiting fellow at The Hague’s International Centre for Counter-Terrorism
Denouncing Saddam’s 100+ acts of apostasy
Abu Omar was a former Iraqi cop dismissed from the force for his outspoken Salafi attitude. According to his IS biographer, when coalition forces detained him, his American captors questioned him about a document listing Saddam Hussein’s one hundred-plus acts of apostasy. He pointed out he had the same view of the ex-Iraqi dictator as US did and was later released
Ends with a bang
Abu Omar later blew himself up in Tikrit in 2010 after US forces surrounded his mud hut. Abu Bakr succeeded him as emir and went on to become the IS caliph