Islamic State Leader Al-Baghdadi Was Held At Infamous Abu Ghraib Prison

Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi spent several months in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Army spokesperson Troy A. Rolan Sr. recently confirmed with The Intercept.

U.S. troops captured a man named Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badry in Fallugjah, Iraq, in 2004. After capturing him, they brought him to Abu Ghraib and assigned him serial number US9IZ-157911CI. Nearly a decade later, that same man would reemerge as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the top leader of the Islamic State.

Al-Baghdadi’s history before he became leader of the Islamic State, even his time spent in U.S. custody, remains murky.

It has been widely believed that al-Baghdadi spent time in U.S. custody at some point during the occupation of Iraq. However, earlier reports suggested he spent that time at Camp Bucca, according to The Intercept, which described that camp as “a sprawling detention facility in southern Iraq.”

A 2014 report form the Daily Beast suggested that al-Baghdadi had been held at Bucca until 2009, but it now appears he was held by the U.S. for a total of only 10 months, from February until December of 2004.

Before Rolan confirmed it, the fact that al-Baghdadi had been detained at Abu Ghraib at all remained unknown.

“Former detainee al-Baghdadi’s internment serial number sequence number begins with ‘157,’” Rolan told The Intercept, referring to the first three digits after the dash in al-Baghdadi’s internment serial number. “This number range was assigned at the Abu Ghraib theater internment facility.”

It turns out that the future Islamic State leader actually spent almost all of his time in U.S. custody in Abu Ghraib.

After some investigation, The Intercept discovered that al-Baghdadi was originally detained at Abu Ghraib and remained there for eight of the 10 months he was held by the U.S. He was then transferred to Bucca just two months before his release.

This new information is important because Abu Ghraib gained international notoriety when allegations that U.S. and Iraqi personal at the prison were torturing and otherwise abusing inmates arose. Many intelligence experts and military analysts feared the reports and images of abuse coming out of Abu Ghraib would serve as a rallying cry for would-be insurgents and jihadists.

Incidentally, the first widespread public reports of the abuses at Abu Ghraib came to light when NBC News aired a segment on the detention center during a broadcast of 60 Minutes in April of 2004. The future leader of the Islamic State was being held at Abu Ghraib at that time.

“In the occupation’s first few years, U.S. facilities like Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca developed a reputation as ‘jihadi universities’ where hard-line extremists indoctrinated and recruited less radical inmates,” Joshua Eaton writes for The Intercept.

“Analysts have long suspected that [al-]Baghdadi took full advantage of his time at Bucca to link up with the jihadis and former Iraqi military officials who would later fill out the Islamic State’s leadership.”

A private intelligence research company named the Soufan Group released a report that included the names of nine Islamic State leaders who had been detained at Camp Bucca at one point or another. However, the Army has since denied the validity of that report, according to The Intercept.

The Soufan Group’s list included al-Baghdadi and Hajji Bakr among others. Bakr served as an official in the Iraqi military under Sadaam Hussein and later went on to become the leader of the military council of the Islamic State.

The U.S. Army Corrections Command told The Intercept it could not find any records suggesting any Islamic State leader other than al-Baghdadi had ever been held in Iraq.

However, Richard Barrett, a senior adviser at the Soufan Group and author the 2014 report, told The Intercept that when he was researching and writing the report the U.S. Army never denied that other Islamic State leaders had once been held at U.S. military prisons.

“It may be that the Army Corrections Command were not very clear who they held, as numbers were large and the ability to check identities fairly limited,” Barrett told The Intercept in an email. “Whatever the facts, it is clear that ex-Baathists and other opponents of the U.S. invasion of Iraq were able to make contact and develop plans.”

Indeed, it remains difficult to estimate the extent of the networking that went on among future Islamic State militants and leaders in Abu Ghraib or Bucca. What is clear is that the top leader of the Islamic State spent time in both of those U.S. Army detentions centers, and it’s quite possible that several other leaders of Islamic State made early connections with each other within those same prisons.

[Photo by AP Images]