ISIS to elect stand-in leader for injured Baghdadi: report

ISIS to elect stand-in leader for injured Baghdadi: report

FPJ BureauUpdated: Saturday, June 01, 2019, 01:50 AM IST
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Washington : With Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi incapacitated due to suspected spinal damage, the terror group’s shura council is to elect a stand-in leader this week to handle day-to-day affairs, according to a media report.

Baghdadi has been moved from Iraq to the Syrian city of Raqqa, the terror army’s de facto capital, amid tight security two months after sustaining serious shrapnel wounds leaving his spine damaged and his left leg immobile, The Daily Beast reported citing accounts of jihadist defectors.

He is said to be mentally alert and able to issue orders, but his physical injuries are now prompting the so-called Islamic State’s governing Shura Council to make a final decision on a temporary stand-in leader who can move back and forth between front-lines in Syria and Iraq and is able to handle day-to-day leadership in the self-declared caliphate.

That leader will be, in effect, under Baghdadi, a super deputy to the caliph — in Arabic, na’ib al-malik — or viceroy, the report said.

According to Islamic State defectors debriefed by opposition activists in neighbouring Turkey, the election will pit two Iraqis and a Syrian against each other — all well-known figures within the terror army’s top leadership.

The defectors were debriefed by Ahmad Abdulkader, who recently launched a network of activists called ‘Eye-On-The-Homeland’.

Abdulkader displayed passports of defectors, debriefing notes and Islamic State ID cards to the US-based website.         He said the other would-be defectors have confirmed the claims of the security defectors.

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