Islamic State leader raped hostage
Family says daughter was abused repeatedly
Washington — American hostage Kayla Mueller was repeatedly forced to have sex with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State group, U.S. intelligence officials told her family in June.
“They told us that he married her, and we all understand what that means,” her father, Carl Mueller, said in an interview Friday, which would have been his daughter’s 27th birthday. Her death was reported in February.
Her mother, Marsha Mueller, said, “Kayla did not marry this man. He took her to his room, and he abused her, and she came back crying.”
The news is but the latest in a litany of horrors perpetrated by the Islamic State, which has beheaded, burned and crucified male captives while passing around women as sex slaves.
Kayla Mueller was held for a time by Islamic State financier Abu Sayyaf and his wife, known as Umm Sayyaf. AlBaghdadi took Kayla Mueller as a “wife,” repeatedly rapingherwhenhe visited, according to a Yazidi teenager who was held with Kayla Mueller and escaped in October 2014.
The 14-year-old made her way to Iraqi Kurdistan, where she talked to U.S. commandos in November 2014. Intelligence agencies corroborated her account, and American officials passed it on to her parents in June.
Umm Sayyaf confirmed that al-Baghdadi had “owned” Kayla Mueller during Umm Sayyaf’s lengthy American interrogation in Iraq, the Muellers said they were told by American officials.
A U.S. official confirmed their account, first reported by London’s Independent newspaper.
Abu Sayyaf was killed in a Delta Force raid of his Syrian compound in June, which resulted in a treasure trove of intelligence about the Islamic State. The cause of Kayla Mueller’s death is in dispute.
Umm Sayyaf has been turned over to the Iraqi Kurds for trial. The Muellers have been told that justice will be served in her case, said a family spokeswoman, Emily Lenzner.
Kayla Mueller was held with three other women, all Yazidis, the Muellers were told. All were sexually abused. “Kayla tried to protect these young girls,” her mother said. “She was like a mother figure to them.”
When the teenage Yazidi girl escaped with her sister, she asked Kayla Mueller to accompany her, the parents were told, but Kayla Mueller refused, worrying that her obvious Western appearance would lead to their capture.
By the time the Yazidi escapee reported the situation to Delta Force commandos in Iraq, Kayla Mueller had been moved, her parents were told.
Kayla Mueller, from Prescott, Ariz., was taken hostage with her boyfriend, Omar Alkhani, in August 2013 after leaving a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Aleppo, Syria, where he had been hired to fix the Internet service for the hospital. Kayla Mueller had begged him to let her tag along because she wanted to do relief work in the war-ravaged country.
Alkhani was released after two months, having been beaten.