The depraved terror mastermind behind Isis

BLOODTHIRSTY Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was a student failure but went on to become a radical hate preacher responsible for some of the most heinous acts of violence captured on film.

Born in 1971 as Ibrahim Awad al-Badri, he studied Islamic culture at the Islamic University in Baghdad. But his contemporaries described him as shy, unimpressive and a man who spouted violence.

He found his calling after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and subsequent capture of despot Saddam Hussein, who had suppressed years of Sunni-Shia tension.

Al-Baghdadi preyed on the sectarian split to advance his sadistic world view.

He helped found a militant group which became the Islamic State of Iraq.

For more than a decade, until 2004, he lived the life of a hermit in a room attached to a small mosque in Tobchi on the outskirts of Baghdad.

The same year he was arrested and held in Camp Bucca – a US facility – but released10 months later because he was deemed a “low level” threat.

Al-Baghdadi came to global attention as the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq after Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was killed by US bombs in 2006.

He is thought to have authorised the gruesome execution of American journalist James Foley, who was filmed as he was beheaded in 2014 – the same year he declared the creation of an Isis “caliphate” across Syria and Iraq.

It was one of many atrocities he oversaw.

Gay men were thrown from rooftops, children were encouraged to execute adults and people were burned or drowned alive in cages.