Wanted Dead or Alive: ISIS' Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi profiled - by Pamela Engel

WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,

The world knows little of the Islamic State terror group's brutal leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, but a new article from counterterrorism expert Will McCants provides one of the most extensive accounts yet of his background.

McCants, director of the Project on US Relations with the Islamic World at the Brookings Institution, wrote an upcoming book on the Islamic State — aka ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh — and researched Baghdadi's life to explain his rise to become one of the most wanted terrorists in the world.

Since Baghdadi became the self-proclaimed "caliph" of ISIS in 2014, he has only appeared in public once, at a mosque in Mosul, Iraq. He was rumored to have died in an air strike earlier this year, but ISIS subsequently released a statement from him along with proof that he was still alive.

Even with new information about his life tricking out in the press, Baghdadi — aka Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Al-Badri — remains a mysterious and reclusive figure.

Click on the link below to know more about his background, as laid out by McCants in his Brookings essay.

Read more: ISIS' Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi profiled - Business Insider