ISIS' now-dead leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, otherwise known as 'The Professor,' had a complicated history, where he once served as a U.S. informant and more recently had a $10 million bounty on his head from Washington.
Al-Qurayshi, also known as Abdullah Qardash, was nicknamed The Professor or The Destroyer because of his reputation as a brutal legislator - is known as a cruel but popular figure among the ISIS rank-and-file.
He replaced Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi after al-Baghdadi blew himself up with a suicide vest during a U.S. raid in 2019. Al-Qurayshi is believed to be a former officer in Saddam Hussein's military who forged an alliance with al-Baghdadi in prison before becoming his enforcer and chief policymaker.
Al-Qurayshi, also known as Abdullah Qardash, was nicknamed The Professor or The Destroyer because of his reputation as a brutal legislator
Al-Qurayshi was once known to U.S. officials as a cooperative informant, who divulged details to American forces on the Islamic State in Iraq. He was captured in 2007 or 2008, and spent months in an American detention camp in Iraq.
Defense Department documents described as an at-times 'cooperative' informant who under interrogation revealed details on the group that he would go on to lead.
According to a statement by Amaq, ISIS's press agency, Baghdadi appointed Al-Qurayshi to run the group's day-to-day operations in August 2019, making him the heir-apparent after his former boss killed himself during the raid by US forces in Syria.
In 2020, the U.S. doubled the bounty on the new ISIS leader's head to $10 million. But al-Qurayshi maintained a low profile -he did not appear in public, and rarely released any audio recordings. His influence and day-to-day involvement in the group’s operations is not known, and he has no known successor.
Al-Qurayshi - also known as Hajji Abdullah al-Afari - was born in Tal Afar, a Sunni-majority town in Iraq, in 1976 - before joining the military while Saddam Hussein ruled the country.
Following the invasion of Iraq by the US in 2003 and President Bush's move to disband the country's military, he found himself locked in jail accused of having links to al-Qaeda.
Al-Qurayshi was known to U.S. officials as a cooperative informant, who divulged details to American forces on the Islamic State in Iraq
In 2020, the U.S. doubled the bounty on the new ISIS leader's head to $10 million, as they released this photo of him
Languishing in a cell at Camp Bucca, al-Qurayshi formed a close bond with Baghdadi, who was then fomenting the extremist religious code that would provide the ideological grounding for the death cult that became ISIS.
After his release al-Qurashi served as a religious commissar and a general sharia judge for al-Qaeda, according to researchers at the S. Rajartnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
Al-Qurayshi was tasked with establishing an institute for training judges and clergymen in the campus of al-Imam al-Adham College in Mosul, likely in part where 'The Professor' nickname came from.
When ISIS emerged as a splinter group from Al-Qaeda's Syrian branch he changed allegiances, where he became Baghdadi's enforcer.
Working close to Baghdadi,he was responsible for eliminating anyone who disagreed with his
