Widow: USA sexually tortured former Daesh leader al-Baghdadi in military prison

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the murdered leader of the terrorist group Daesh Takfiri, was subjected to “sexual torture” during his time in US custody in 2004, his widow claims.

Umm Hudaifa, who is currently detained in a Baghdad prison, gave insights into her life alongside Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in an interview with the BBC published on Monday.

Before his imprisonment in 2004, al-Baghdadi was “religious but not an extremist” and “conservative but open-minded,” said Umm Hudaifa, who is currently under investigation in an Iraqi prison for her links to Daesh.

She claimed that the year-long detention at the US-run Camp Bucca brought about a significant change in Baghdadi’s personality. He was reportedly arrested after forming a militant group that allegedly fought against the US and allied occupation forces in Iraq. She said he told her that during his detention he was exposed to something “that you cannot understand”.

Umm Hudaifa also claimed that after her release, Baghdadi had a short temper and frequent outbursts of anger, and that she had developed psychological problems that she attributed to “sexual torture.”

Meanwhile, Umm Hudaifa herself is suspected of involvement in the sexual slavery of women and girls abducted by Daesh leaders. She has denied the allegations, claiming that she herself tried to flee from Daesh but was forced to return by armed individuals stationed at checkpoints.

She expressed her deep shock and disgust at the atrocities committed by Daesh, describing them as “inhuman” and “beyond the limits of humanity”. She also expressed her feelings of shame at the violence inflicted on the Izadi minority, but denied the allegations against her.

Previously, Hamid Yazidi and his niece Soad, who was repeatedly enslaved, raped and sold, filed a civil lawsuit against Umm Hudaifa, accusing her of complicity in the kidnapping of Yazidi’s two wives, 26 children and his two brothers and their families by Daesh. Six of Yazidi’s children remain missing.

Soad says that Hudaifa played a key role in selecting individuals for bondage, and states that her sister was among the girls Hudaifa selected for this purpose.

In 2014, after Daesh captured the Iraqi city of Mosul, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced the establishment of a so-called caliphate.

At the time, Daesh committed genocide against the Izadi, as well as hostage-taking, enslavement and massacres of Muslim civilians in the areas under its control. Despite his declaration, Muslims around the world overwhelmingly rejected his claim.

In October 2019, then-US President Donald Trump announced that US special forces had carried out an attack on Baghdadi in northwestern Syria, in which the Daesh leader killed himself by detonating a suicide vest.

Experts believe that the United States created the terrorist group Daesh and contributed to its rise before it began its reign of terror and destruction in Syria and Iraq in 2014.

As early as 2016, former US President Donald Trump, then the Republican presidential candidate, declared at a campaign rally that former President Barack Obama and Trump’s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton had founded Daesh.