The Iraqi government dismissed as fake a video allegedly showing the leader of the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) delivering a sermon, stressing that he was injured by an airstrike.
The Iraqi government dismissed as fake a video allegedly showing the leader of the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) delivering a sermon, stressing that he was injured by an airstrike.
Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman, Brigadier General Saad Maan, told Reuters that the footage allegedly showing Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi at a mosque in central Mosul, located some 400 kilometers northwest of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, was “indisputably” not him.
“We have analyzed the footage...and found it is a farce,” Maan said, adding that Iraqi government forces had recently wounded Baghdadi in an airstrike and he had been transferred by the ISIL militants to Syria for medical treatment.
A 21-minute video posted on social media on Saturday showed a man clad in a long black robe and a black turban with a long graying beard addressing people at what looked like a mosque.
During the alleged sermon, the man calls on all Muslims to obey him and urges people to follow his call to create a “caliphate,” or what he considers an Islamic state, in Iraq and Syria. The man says Muslims are sinners if they do not seek this goal of establishing an “Islamic state.”
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is a nom de guerre, rather than the real name of the person who is referred to as the ISIL’s leader.
Analysts say that the Takfiri militant group, which has seized large swathes of Iraq through assistance by former Iraqi army officers associated with the defunct Ba’ath party and executed dictator, Saddam Hussein, is bankrolled by Saudi Arabia.
More than one million Iraqis have fled their homes over the past month as the ISIL terrorists seized Mosul, Tikrit and other cities in the northwest areas.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said Saudi Arabia and Qatar are responsible for the security crisis and growing terrorism in his country.
