US hostage ‘raped by ISIL head’: report

The information about Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi’s direct role in her abuse was drawn from a variety of sources.

In this May 30, 2013 photo, Kayla Mueller is shown after speaking to a group in Prescott, Arizona. AP Photo

NEW YORK // US hostage Kayla Mueller was raped repeatedly by Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, the head of ISIL, before her death.

Mr Al Baghdadi personally brought the 26-year-old aid worker to be jailed inside the home of the group’s top financier, ABC News reported on Friday.

The television network quoted US counter-terrorism officials and spoke to Mueller’s parents, who confirmed being told by government officials that their daughter was sexually assaulted by Baghdadi.

“We were told Kayla was tortured, that she was the property of Al Baghdadi. We were told that in June by the government,” Carl and Marsha Mueller told ABC News.

The Iraqi extremist regularly visited the compound to meet his financial lieutenant, Abu Sayyaf, and to sexually assault Mueller, ABC said.

ISIL fighters claimed Mueller, who was kidnapped in the Syrian city of Aleppo in August 2013, was killed in a February 6 coalition air raid that buried her in rubble.

US officials say the circumstances of her death remain unclear.

Abu Sayyaf was killed on May 15 in a rare US commando raid on the town of Al Omar inside war-torn Syria.

The fresh revelations about Mueller’s ordeal shatter rumours that she co-operated or was a willing spouse, which had deeply upset her family, ABC said.

It said the information about Mr Al Baghdadi’s direct role in her abuse was drawn from a variety of sources, including US debriefings of two Yazidi teenage girls held as sex slaves in the Sayyaf compound and the interrogation of Abu Sayyaf’s wife.

Mueller would have turned 27 on Friday.

Republican Senator John McCain, from the Muellers’ home state of Arizona, has called on the government to explain why Sayyaf’s widow was not extradited to the US to stand trial.

Although the White House said she was “complicit” in Mueller’s captivity, she was handed over to Kurdish authorities in Iraq. Mr McCain questioned the reasons for her evading US justice.

* Agence France-Presse