Al-Baghdadi raid named after 26-year-old hostage
Trump calls Ariz. family after death of IS leader
PHOENIX – For nearly 20 minutes Sunday, Carl and Marsha Mueller spoke by phone with President Donald Trump about the military operation that ended with the death of the terrorist leader believed to be the captor and rapist of the Muellers’ daughter, Kayla.
Trump had answered many of the questions the Muellers asked, and they were grateful for his kindness. They were not expecting the next phone call.
It was Robert O’Brien, the White House national security adviser, who delivered a new bit of news: The military operation, the one that resulted in the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had been named after their daughter, Kayla.
“It was so touching for us to know that,” Carl said.
Al-Baghdadi reportedly had been the captor and rapist of Kayla, a 26year-old aid worker who was taken hostage in 2013 as she left a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Aleppo, Syria. She was held hostage for 18 months before militants announced her death in 2015.
The events of the weekend brought some comfort for two people who had found little of that in the six years since their daughter disappeared.
From their Prescott, Arizona, ranch house along a curvy mountain road, Carl and Marsha had watched Trump’s news conference Sunday morning, when he announced al-Baghdadi’s death. And then they had waited for the president’s call.
Carl made a list of questions for the president. “If you don’t write it down, you forget in the moment,” Carl said. “It’s very intimidating.”
After the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, announced Kayla was dead on Feb. 6, 2015, allegedly killed in a Jordanian airstrike, the militants sent the Muellers an email containing three photographs of their daughter, pale and still. Her body was never recovered, so Carl and Marsha never got the chance to bury her.
“I don’t know yet what happened to Kayla, what truly happened to Kayla,” Marsha said. She hoped the ISIS leader’s death would bring them answers.
The president called in the late afternoon Sunday.
It became clear as Trump spoke that he knew Kayla’s story, what she had endured, and what her parents had endured. Carl and Marsha found that comforting.
“It was almost like talking to a friend,” Carl said.
They spoke for 18 minutes and worked through 90% of the questions on the list Carl had made. Trump promised Carl he would bring up one question he couldn’t answer in a meeting he had scheduled Monday.
When O’Brien called, Carl and Marsha asked that he convey their gratitude to the force that conducted the mission that resulted in al-Baghdadi’s death.
Carl said he suspects the mission involved some of the same soldiers who were part of a an unsuccessful 2015 rescue mission that targeted four prisoners held at a makeshift ISIS prison.
By the time U.S. commandos stormed the compound in that mission, the hostages were gone. Some relatives and people who worked on the raid blamed the Obama White House for not acting swiftly enough to give the mission a green light.
“I still say Kayla should be here, and if Obama had been as decisive as President Trump, maybe she would have been,” Marsha said.
On Monday morning,the Muellers’ phone rang once more. Vice President Mike Pence was calling to express his support for the family.
“This administration is being proactive, and we are very confident we are going to be be able to get the answers we’ve been wanting for six years,” Carl said.