Al-Baghdadi has not even been seen in public since June 2014. In July 2014, he was reportedly seriously injured, and was said to have fled to Syria. In April 2015, he was reportedly seriously injured in an airstrike. The Iranians even said that he was dead. And now they’re claiming he was poisoned. Perhaps they, like the Pentagon, which is “investigating” this claim, have a vested interest in appearing to be more effective against the Islamic State than they really are.
In any case, Baghdadi may be dead for all anyone outside the Islamic State really knows. He is more potent as a symbol than as a reality.
“ISIS leader al-Baghdadi may have been poisoned,” by Jamie Schram, New York Post, October 3, 2016:
The Pentagon is investigating whether ISIS kingpin Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was poisoned during a lunchtime feast — causing him to fall seriously ill.
The ISIS leader and three commanders were eating in the small town of Be’aj, Iraq, when all four suffered “severe poisoning” and had to be “transferred to an unknown location under strict measures,” the Iraqi news agency WAA said.
The barbaric terror group, also known as ISIL and Daesh, has launched a full-scale investigation to find the culprits, according to WAA.
Pentagon spokesman and Navy Capt. Jeff Davis told The Post that he is “aware of the reports, but we have no information to corroborate [them].”
“Suffice it to say we always have great interest in the whereabouts and condition of the leader of ISIL,” Davis added when asked if the US military was looking into the matter.
Over recent years, Baghdadi has risen to the top of the extremist world, becoming the most feared jihadi leader since Osama bin Laden.
The US government has put a $7 million bounty on his head….
Meanwhile, Iraqi jets leveled a radio station used by the ISIS.
Broadcasting abruptly stopped on Sunday at the Al-Bayan radio station, NBC News reported.
The station was “one of the strongest” propaganda tools used by the terror group, a spokesman at Iraq’s Joint Operation Command told NBC.
“They used to broadcast Islamic anthems that encouraged people to join them,” the spokesman said.
The station encouraged listeners “to stand against the government and encouraged people to be terrorists under the name of jihad,” he added.