ISIS Leader Baghdadi Makes First Video Appearance in 5 Years, Emphasizes Group’s Global Reach by Liz Sly and Souad Mekhennet – Washington Post
Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi surfaced Tuesday in a video for the first time in five years, indicating that he has survived the territorial defeat of the caliphate he proclaimed and retains overall control of the group.
Seated cross-legged on a flowered mattress in a bare white room, Baghdadi hailed the Islamic State’s expansion around the globe, urged his supporters to keep up the fight and congratulated the perpetrators of the Easter Sunday suicide attacks on churches and hotels in Sri Lanka.
Baghdadi’s beard, apparently tinted with henna at some point in the recent past, has grayed since his only other video appearance — at the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in the Iraqi city of Mosul in July 2014 — when he first announced the Islamic State’s intention to re-create the caliphate. But otherwise he looked to be in good health and showed no obvious sign of injury, despite numerous reports in recent years that he had been wounded in airstrikes or in battle.
Propped up beside him is a Kalashnikov rifle of the same model — an AK-74 — that featured in videos made by al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden and the Islamic State’s first leader, Abu Musab Zarqawi. Baghdadi is dressed in a black tunic and a military-style vest, and the entire scene appeared designed to emphasize his lineage in the jihadist movement.
The timing of the video, released by the Islamic State’s Furqan channel, seemed to confirm the widespread belief that he survived the Islamic State’s final stand in the battle of Baghouz in eastern Syria last month. Iraqi and U.S. officials say he is thought to be hiding out in the desert in either Syria or Iraq, but the video gave no indication of his current location…