Mawla the 'Destroyer', Brutal New Head of IS Group

[Valin]

Naharnet

July 21 2020

With monikers as divergent as the "Professor" and the "Destroyer", the Islamic State group's new head has a reputation for brutality, but otherwise remains largely an enigma.

Amir Mohammed Said Abd al-Rahman al-Mawla replaced Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi after his death in a raid by U.S. special forces last October.

Mawla was initially presented to the world by the Islamic State (IS) as Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi -- a man about whom America and Iraq had little intelligence.

U.S. officials later came to believe that al-Qurashi was Mawla's nom de guerre, recognizing him in March as the new head of IS.

The State Department immediately placed him on its "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" list, sparking a quest to learn more about a most-wanted man who now has a $10 million bounty on his head.

One thing everyone seems to agree on is Mawla's brutal nature.

He is probably best known for playing "a major role in the jihadist campaign of liquidation of the Yazidi minority (of Iraq) through massacres, expulsion and sexual slavery," according to Jean-Pierre Filiu, a jihadism analyst at the Sciences Po university in Paris.

The new IS leader was born, likely in 1976, in the town of Tal Afar, some 70 kilometers (40 miles) from Mosul.

(Snip)

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H/T Rantburg