U.S. officials say they have not corroborated that account, and that ISIS is responsible for her death. The commandos allegedly tried to capture the commander alive, but were forced to shoot Abu Sayyaf when he raised a weapon, according to officials.
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Mueller’s family had previously released a letter their daughter had written in which she talked about the conditions of her captivity.
News of Baghdadi’s abuse of Mueller, who is from Prescott, Arizona, was first reported Friday by the Independent, a London newspaper. Did he turn her over to them?
Abu Sayyaf, a Tunisian, was killed in a US special forces raid on his Syrian compound in June, which American officials said reaped vital intelligence about IS. Al-Baghdadi took Mueller as a “wife”, repeatedly raping her when he visited, according to a Yazidi teenager who was held with Mueller and escaped.
ISIL said in February that Mueller, from the US state of Arizona, was killed when Jordanian fighter jets bombed a building where she was being held.
In al-Shadadiya, Mueller was often visited by Baghdadi, said the girl, who cooked and cleaned in the house.
Since ISIS announced its revival of institutional slavery a year ago, the group has systematically enslaved and raped thousands of women from the minority Yazidi community, according to New York Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi. And Mueller wrote a note to her family at one point saying as much.
The White House also confirmed her death and said the group provided additional information about the death that was “authenticated” by US intelligence agencies. The Islamic State group said Mueller was killed in a Jordanian airstrike.
“We were told Kayla was tortured, that she was the property of al-Baghdadi”, Kayla’s parents, Carl and Marsha Mueller, told ABC News on Friday, the day she would have turned 27.
The late terrorist’s wife, Umm Sayyaf, was captured and was in U.S. custody until this week, when she was handed over to Kurdish authorities in Iraq to stand trial.
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Troops found evidence the hostages had been there recently, including writings on the cell walls and hair believed to be Mueller’s, one U.S. official said. When the Yazidi girl and her sister escaped, they asked Mueller to join them but she apparently refused out of fear that her obvious western appearance would put them all in danger. She is an NPR contributor and has contributed to USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, National Review Online, Politico and more, and has myriad television and radio credits as a commentator.
