Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

Biography

Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badri, known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was born in Samarra in 1971 to a religious Sunni family. He later claimed descent from the Prophet's tribe of Quraysh, without evidence. He studied Islamic subjects, and according to his supporters earned degrees up to a doctorate from the Islamic University of Baghdad.

After the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 he led a small insurgent group and was held at the US detention site Camp Bucca in 2004. His group joined the Mujahideen Shura Council in 2006, and when that coalition became the Islamic State of Iraq he rose through its ranks, becoming its leader in 2010.

In 2013 he renamed the group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and sought to absorb the al-Nusra Front in Syria, which set off a conflict with al-Qaeda's central leadership. In June 2014 the group declared a caliphate with Baghdadi as caliph. Under his rule it seized large parts of Iraq and Syria and committed mass atrocities, including the genocide of Yazidis, sexual slavery and public executions.

The Islamic State lost almost all its territory during his last years. On 27 October 2019, during an American special-forces raid on his hideout in Barisha in Syria's Idlib Province, he killed himself and two children with a suicide vest.