Captured Isis widow who 'ran sex slave network' reveals hideouts of Baghdadi

The captured widow of an Isis member has been playing a key role in helping the CIA find Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Nisrine Assad Ibrahim, better known as Umm Sayyaf, 29, is accused of being involved in some of the Islamic State’s worst crimes, including running a sex slave network.

Sayyaf has now admitted to helping the US intelligence agency to trace the movements of Baghdadi – the notorious leader of Iraq’s Islamic State.

Investigators revealed she has pointed out his safe houses, hideouts and secret networks, reported The Guardian.

She has even predicted where he may be right now, suggesting Qa’im or Bukamal in Iraq as potential spots, as she said he felt safer there than in Syria.

Sayyaf, whose family had been an integral part of the Islamic State, was captured by US officials in May 2015, during a raid of Isis-stronghold Deir Ezzor in Syria.

Her husband, Fathi Ben Awn Ben Jildi Murad al-Tunis known as Abu Sayaff – who was killed during the raid – was Isis’ oil minister and had been a close friend of Baghdadi’s.

Sayyaf now faces the death penalty after a court ruling in Erbil, Iraq, and is currently being held by Kurdish authorities.

Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney has requested Sayyaf’s transfer from Iraq to the US to face justice for her crimes against enslaved US aid worker Kayla Mueller and nine Yazidi minority women.

Representing the victims, Mrs Clooney said Miss Mueller ‘was held in brutal conditions for over 18 months and raped repeatedly’ by Baghdadi.

The lawyer told a UN Security Council meeting in April: ‘Umm Sayyaf showed no solidarity with her fellow females.

‘She locked them in a room, instigated their beatings and put makeup on them to ‘prepare’ them for rape.’

Sayyaf told The Guardian she lived in the town of Shadadah, where Miss Mueller was held for a month in 2014, but denied her involvement in the sexual abuse of the US citizen and other victims.

She said: ‘Whatever he [Baghdadi] did did not involve me. Sometimes he would come for a few hours. Sometimes he would stay longer.’

It is believed Miss Mueller died in Raqqa in February 2015.

The widow’s close involvement in key Isis meetings meant she had a good understanding of Baghdadi’s likely movements but she was reluctant to reveal any information for the first year of her detainment.

Eventually she began cooperating and told authorities she often saw Baghdadi recording jihadist propaganda videos from her own home.

Sayyaf told newspaper: ‘He used to do that in our sitting room in Taji [central Iraq]. My husband was the media chief then and al-Baghdadi would visit often.’

In February 2016 she began revealing some of the Islamic State’s most sensitive secrets and pinpointed a house where Baghdadi was believed to have been staying in Mosul, northern Iraq.

She said: ‘I told them where the house was. I knew he’d been there because it was one of the houses that was provided for him and one of the places he liked the most.’

Sayyaf revealed ‘everything’ she knew by looking over maps and photographs with US officials, who she described as ‘very polite’ and wearing ‘civilian clothes’.

The widow‘s information led Kurdish officers to the location of a hideout prepared for the leader and run by her aunt, Saadia Ibrahim, who she claimed has worked with Baghdadi since the ‘beginning’.

A senior Kurdish official said Sayyaf has given them a ‘clear picture’ of Baghdadi’s family structure and identified the varying responsibilities in the network, adding that the wives play an integral role.

Despite her cooperation, her ruling is unlikely to be changed as intelligence chiefs believe if she returned to her radical environment, she will ‘become like them’.