For a man so mysterious that there are only two known photographs of him, it was a brazen public debut. The most wanted man in the Middle East, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is also one of the most elusive, an evanescent figure behind the Islamist insurrection sweeping the Syrian and Iraqi interior.
And yet according to jihadist websites at the weekend, here he was on video openly rallying the adepts of the new Islamic state he had just pronounced in the largest city that his fighters had taken. Clad in black robes that invoked a distant, almost mythical phase of Islamic history, Baghdadi gave a half-hour sermon during Friday prayers in Mosul and led worship inside one of the most important Islamic sites in Iraq in open defiance of the US intelligence officials who have put a $10m bounty on his head.
In doing so, he laid down a challenge not only to the authorities in Baghdad and the foreign powers that want stability in the country, but to the radical Islamist mothership from which the Isis movement broke – al-Qaida, and its current leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Those present at the grand mosque in Mosul had no idea who would be preaching on Friday. But as the bearded figure made his entrance, he was introduced to them simply as "your new caliph Ibrahim".
"I am not better than you or more virtuous than you," Baghdadi says in the video. "If you see me on the right path, help me. If you see me on the wrong path, advise me and halt me. And obey me as far as I obey God." » | Martin Chulov in Baghdad | Sunday, July 06, 2014
