"Sources tell us Baghdadi is still alive, but still unable to move due to spinal injury sustained in the March air strike," Shaheen tweeted.Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who last year declared himself caliph of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh), was reportedly wounded in a US-led airstrike in March.
Martin Chulov at The Guardian, who last week broke the news of the airstrike, also says his sources tell him Baghdadi is still alive and being treated by doctors from Mosul.
Information on Baghdadi's reported injury and the airstrike that apparently caused it is still vague.
Two officials, one Western and one Iraqi, confirmed to The Guardian that the airstrike targeted multiple cars in the town of Baaj in northwestern Iraq on March 18, but the Pentagon said the airstrike was not aimed at a high-value target and that it had "no reason to believe it was Baghdadi."
Chulov reports that officials didn't know that Baghdadi was in one of the cars targeted in the airstrike. He was reportedly staying in that area of Iraq because he "knew from the war that the Americans did not have much cover there," a source who is aware of Baghdadi's
Baghdadi is reportedly recovering slowly but has not resumed day-to-day control of ISIS. A former physics teacher from Mosul, Abu Alaa Afri, was installed as ISIS' temporary leader while Baghdadi recovers, an Iraqi government adviser told Newsweek last week.
You mean the Afri who ratted out Baghdadi, of course? ;-)
Newsweek describes Afri as a "rising star" within ISIS, and the Iraqi government adviser, Hisham al Hashimi, said Afri had become even more important than Baghdadi.
Afri will assume full leadership of ISIS if Baghdadi dies, Hashimi said.
Having a caliph with a background of religious education is important to ISIS, which has shaped its self-proclaimed caliphate around a strict interpretation of sharia law. The group recruits people to live in its territory by marketing it as an Islamic utopia.
Der Spiegel reported recently that early leaders of ISIS, many of whom are former Iraqi intelligence officers from the regime of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, decided to make Baghdadi caliph because he, as an "educated cleric," would "give the group a religious face."