Published on 12:00 AM, June 02, 2019

IS widow helped CIA in hunt for Baghdadi

The captured widow of an Islamic State group leader helped the CIA in its hunt for the organisation’s elusive leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a British daily said Friday. In an interview with The Guardian, Nisrine Assad Ibrahim -- also known as Umm Sayyaf -- claimed not to have played a willing part in the detention of US hostage Kayla Mueller at her home. She has been accused of helping to forcibly hold Mueller and other captives at the home, where the American woman was sexually assaulted by Baghdadi. But when she herself was detained by the US military, the 29-year-old helped the CIA and Kurdish intelligence gain a detailed overview of the extremist supremo’s hideouts and networks, investigators told the daily. In February 2016, Ibrahim identified a house in the Iraqi city of Mosul in which Baghdadi was believed to have been staying, but the United States did not call in an air strike.