Inside The Hunt For Islamic State Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

Martin Chulov and Spencer Ackerman, The Guardian: Inside the hunt for Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

Intelligence officials have pieced together details of the recent movements of the world’s most wanted man.

At the closest point they can reach to the Islamic State heartlands, the Kurdish Peshmerga can almost feel their enemy. Most days Isis fighters fire mortars or bullets at their frontline, 10 miles south of Sinjar, sometimes crawling through long grass for hours until they are close enough to shoot.

Several miles further south, some of Isis’s most senior leaders regularly gather in the grey concrete villages of the terror group’s northern vanguard, which for more than a decade had been the safest corners of Iraq for them to come and go. Moving among the nearby towns of Ba’ej and Billij, according to the Kurds watching from the ground, and intelligence officials keeping tabs from other vantage points, is the world’s most wanted man, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

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WNU Editor: I can only imagine the enormous resources that have been (and are now being) deployed to find him. I am sure that one day he will be found and killed (no war crimes trial for him) .... but when will that day happen is something that no one can predict.