‘ISIS honchos were trained by US forces in Camp Bucca!’

Mohammed Mahmoud Mortada, the journalist with Al-Akhbar who has made this damning claim, says that as many as four frontline ISIS militants including their proclaimed head, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, went rigorous training mechanisms on explosives and suicide attacks.

However, the period of Baghdadi’s detention is unclear with some press reports saying he stayed at Bucca Camp for only 10 months quite contrarily to Mortada’s report which says he was detained from 2004 to mid 2006 post which he formed the Army of Sunnis, which later merged with the so-called Mujahideen Shura Council.  

He further adds that former detainees in documented television interviews have said that the facility resembled like an Al-Qaeda school.  Mortada further quotes a former prisoner Adel Jassem Mohammed who says that one of the extremists remained in the prison for two weeks only, but even so was able to recruit 25 out of 34 inmates who were there. Giving an entirely new twist the scheme of things, Mortada added that the U.S. military officials did nothing to stop the extremists from mentoring the other detainees. This revelation comes at a time when the United States has launched air strikes against ISIS in Iraq to contain the extremist organisation to spread its base further.

The complicity of the situation can be gauged from the fact that a majority of IS leaders, other than being trained at Camp Bucca were also officers in the Baathist Army.  This can perhaps explain the ease with which the radical group has been able to infiltrate clans and coax some of their leaders into joining its ranks.

After he installed himself as Caliph of the Muslims, IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdad spoke about the terror being inflicted on Palestine, but with cursory significance only. The speech was attributed in the wide to the atrocities Muslims face globally. Even Osama bin Laden, the now slain chief of Al-Qaeda’s stand was widely contentious. Mortada’s question, ‘Why have the jihadis never declared Palestine an arena for their jihad?’ seems legitimate here.

Sheikh Ayman al- Zawahiri who now heads Al- Qaeda however has an interesting take on the issue. He says, ‘Fighting in Palestine should be on the basis that it is an abode of Islam, and that therefore, liberating it is a duty for every Muslim.’

Mortada further says that most Muslims who adhere by the tenets of Salafi- Jihadism believe that Shias are more dangerous than Jews and believe that liberating Palestine is irrelevant without the establishment of the caliphate in the countries surrounding Palestine first. Sources linked to IS told Al-Akhbar that, ‘The final war that will liberate Palestine will be led by the caliphate, preceded by the establishment of this state in the Levant and Iraq. The priority is to liberate Baghdad, then head to Damascus and liberate all of the Levant, before liberating Palestine.’ Jihadis as per Mortada further say that since Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan do not want a confrontation with Israel, any attempt to use their territories to target Israel means automatically a confrontation with these regimes.

Patrick Cockburn in Counterpunch reveals that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, whose real name is believed to be Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai has become the most powerful jihadi in the world in a space of a year. Baghdadi, who became the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) in 2010 after its former leaders were killed in an attack by US and Iraqi troops is supposed to be extremely guarded and almost nobody knows of his whereabouts.