US doubles bounty on new ISIS leader to $10M

Al Mawla was placed in charge of the terrorist network after Abu Bakr al Baghdadi was killed in October during a Delta Force operation. Al Mawla, also known as Hajji Abdallah and Abu-Umar al Turkmani, was labeled a “specially designated global terrorist” by the United States in March.

(US State Department)

After ISIS confirmed Baghdadi’s death, it claimed its new leader’s name was Abu Ibrahim al Hashimi al Qurayshi. U.S. intelligence was not familiar with the name at the time but discovered that it was another identity used by al Mawla.

A State Department spokesperson told the Washington Examiner on Friday that ISIS’s “leaders and names may change but our resolve and global efforts against them remain unyielding.”

“The increased reward offer reflects the position that al Mawla now holds as ISIS leader, as well as the responsibility he bears for many of the group’s brutal crimes. The United States and our partners in the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS remain committed to doing exactly that ⁠— defeating ISIS,” the spokesman said in a statement.

The State Department said al Mawla was previously a “religious scholar” in ISIS’s precursor, al Qaeda in Iraq. He was born in a northern Iraqi city to an ethnic Turkmen family, and his religious rulings “helped drive and justify the abduction, slaughter, and trafficking of the Yazidi religious minority in northwest Iraq.”

Because of the March designation, “U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in any transactions with al Mawla, and al Mawla’s property and interests in property subject to U.S. jurisdiction will be blocked. In addition, it is a crime to knowingly provide or attempt or conspire to provide material support or resources to ISIS.”

The increased reward came on the same day that the State Department released its annual Country Reports on Terrorism.

The Arabic-language Twitter account for Rewards for Justice included a video featuring al Mawla’s face and scenes of destruction.