The first wife of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has shared details of their lives in a rare interview from prison, expressing her shock at the “inhuman” atrocities committed by the jihadist group.
Widow Umm Hudaifa was married to the ISIS leader while he oversaw ISIS’s brutal rule over large parts of Syria and Iraq, which committed genocide against the Yazidi people and took thousands of women as slaves, while also killing hostages and civilians .
In an interview with the BBC, Hudaifa – who is under investigation for terror-related crimes – claimed she was living in Raqqa, Syria, when her husband declared himself leader.
She explained that she often spent time away from her husband, who was in hiding as a wanted leader of the extremist jihadist group. A few days earlier, her sons were picked up to learn to swim in the Euphrates.
After turning on the TV one day, she said she got a “big surprise” when she saw her husband addressing the Grand Mosque of al-Nuri in the Iraqi city of Mosul, declaring himself head of the Islamic Caliphate.
Caliphate leader: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi detonated his own suicide vest during the targeted attack on his hideout in Syria’s Idlib province, killing three of his children in the blast. He is seen in a still from a video released in April 2019 and has not been seen since he spoke at the Grand Mosque in Mosul in 2014.
She was shocked to discover that her sons were in Mosul with her husband. “He told me they were going on a trip to teach the boys to swim,” she told the BBC.
Hudaifa also described ISIS’s atrocities as a “huge shock” and “inhumane,” adding that they “crossed a line of humanity.”
She added that she was “ashamed” of the violence against the Yazidis.
The widow is under investigation for her suspected role in ISIS and the crimes committed by the terrorist organization, and she is currently being held in a prison in Baghdad.
She has denied her involvement in the sexual slavery of women and girls, claiming she was a victim herself and was trying to escape her husband, whom she married in 1999.
A general view of the Mosul Grand Mosque as reconstruction work continues in Mosul, Iraq, on June 7, 2024, 10 years after Islamic State militants took control of the city and ruled for three years before being driven out by Iraqi troops and their allies. R
Last month’s photo shows displaced Syrian children playing near a garbage dump in the Rukban camp, located in a no man’s land in southern Syria, on the border with Iraq and Jordan. The Rukban camp was established in 2014, at the height of Syria’s ongoing war, as desperate people fled Islamic State (IS) jihadists and government bombardments in the hope of entering Jordan.
Syrian refugees gather as they prepare to leave the Arsal area, before their journey to their homes in Syria, in Arsal in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, May 14, 2024. Lebanese state media said on May 14 that about 330 Syrians in Lebanon their ‘voluntary’ repatriation from various areas of Lebanon.
Her husband, Iraqi-born ISIS leader Al-Baghdadi, rose to prominence on the world stage after ISIS ruled northern Iraq and northeastern Syria more than a decade ago, before detonating a suicide vest when Special Ops forces from the American army was approaching its hideout in the city. Northwest Syria on October 27, 2019.
In 2014, he made a rare appearance in which he declared himself caliph, the ruler of the Muslim community.
Hudaifa claimed that when she first married her husband, he was “conservative but open-minded” and claimed he was not an extremist.
However, she said that after al-Baghdadi was held at Camp Bucca in 2004 following the 2004 US-led invasion of Iraq, he changed and claimed he was suffering from psychological problems.
Al-Baghdadi was reportedly arrested after founding a militant Sunni group to fight US and allied Western occupation forces.
He spent his years in detention with many other men who would later become senior figures within ISIS and other jihadist groups.
Although he did not tell her directly, Hudaifa believes her husband suffered “sexual torture.”
Hudaifa added that upon his return, she began to suspect that her husband belonged to a militant group as they moved frequently and had false identities.
She then filed for a divorce but stayed with him because she could not agree to his condition that she give up their children.
“We moved to rural Idlib, Syria, in January 2012, and there it became absolutely clear to me that he was the emir (leader),” she said.
The barbarity of the militant groups that formed ISIS was already prominent, but in 2014 the bloodshed became even more widespread.
This included ISIS’s genocide against Iraq’s Yazidi minority, as well as the murder, torture, kidnapping and enslavement of civilians.
“Unjust bloodshed is a horrible thing and in that respect they have crossed the line of humanity,” Hudaifa told the BBC.
She also claimed that she challenged her husband about his involvement in the murder of thousands, telling him that “other things could have been done under Islamic law, such as leading them to repentance.”
But in 2014, nine Yazidi girls, ranging in age from nine to 30, were taken to Hudaifa’s home, where she claimed they only stayed for a few days.
A woman named Soad, who was enslaved, raped and sold seven times, and her father Hamid have filed a civil lawsuit against Hudaifa for her involvement in the kidnapping and enslavement of Yazidi girls.
‘She was responsible for everything. She made the choices: this one to serve her, that one to serve her husband… and my sister was one of those girls.”
“She is the wife of the criminal Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and she is a criminal just like him,” Soad told the BBC.