Islamic State leader appears in video for first time in 5 years

Associated Press

BEIRUT

The shadowy leader of the Islamic State group claimed to appear for the first time in five years in a video released by the extremist group’s propaganda arm Monday, acknowledging defeat in the group’s last stronghold in Syria but vowing a “long battle” ahead.

The man said to be Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in the video also claimed the Easter Day bombings in Sri Lanka that killed more than 250 people were “part of the revenge” that awaits the West.

Despite numerous claims about his death in the past few years, al-Baghdadi’s whereabouts remain a mystery. Many of his top aides have been killed, mostly by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes. He is among the few senior IS commanders still at large after two years of steady battlefield losses that saw the self-styled “caliphate” shrink from an area the size of Britain to a tiny speck in the Euphrates River valley.

The video released by a media outlet run by the extremists, Al-Furqan, shows al-Baghdadi with a bushy grey and red beard, wearing a black robe with a beige vest and seated on the floor with what appears to be an AK47 rifle propped up next to him. He is speaking with three men seated opposite him whose faces were covered and blotted out.

It is his first video appearance since he delivered a sermon at the al-Nuri mosque in the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2014. In that video, he appeared as a black-robed figure with a trimmed black beard to deliver a sermon from the pulpit of the mosque in which he urged Muslims around the world to swear allegiance to the caliphate and obey him as its leader.

Since then, he has released only audio messages through the group’s media outlets.