Widow of ISIS Leader Spills on Life With the Notorious Terrorist

The widow of the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi gave a rare interview from the Iraqi prison in which she is being kept, shining a light on what it was like to live with the notoriously brutal terrorist while he ruled over large parts of Syria and Iraq. Umm Hudaifa told the BBC that on the day he announced the formation of an ISIS caliphate, al-Baghdadi told her that he was taking the pair’s two young sons “on a trip to teach the boys how to swim.” She caught his address that day on a television she surreptitiously used in their house and was shocked to find that they were not swimming at all. She said his personality changed drastically after he was detained in 2004 by American forces for a whole year, likely suffering physical and psychological torture during that time. “He became short tempered and given to outbursts of anger,” she said, according to the BBC. “I don’t deny that my husband was a criminal,” she said at another point.

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