Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • The Guardian

    Isis wife and alleged Kayla Mueller jailer: 'Our husbands became like wild animals'

    In her first interview, Umm Sayyaf paints picture of Isis leaders that supports accounts of their savagery
    by Martin Chulov in Erbil May 31, 2019 7 minutes
    Women who fled heavy fighting in the city of Baghuz sit in trucks taking them to a refugee camp for suspected Isis families in February. Photograph: Achilleas Zavallis/The Guardian

    At the height of Islamic State’s rule, Umm Sayyaf would regularly prepare her home in eastern Syria to receive her husband’s friend. When the bearded man in the black robe arrived she would make tea and lay a platter of food in a sitting room. Other doors in the sprawling house in the town of Shahadah remained locked; enslaved women and girls from the Yazidi community huddled together in one room, and an American hostage, Kayla Mueller, sat alone in another.

    The man in the black robe was Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Isis, and Umm Sayyaf’s husband, Abu Sayyaf – an extremist who had risen through the ranks of the terror group alongside Baghdadi to become one of its top three figures – was the Isis oil minister. She, meanwhile, came from a well-known Iraqi jihadist family: her lineage and spouse earned trust and made her one of the few women to have regular access to the Isis leadership – until the day US commandos came for them in May 2015.

    In the four years since the raid that killed her husband and led to her capture, Umm Sayyaf, 29, otherwise known by her

    You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

    More from The Guardian

    The Guardian4 min read
    ‘Everyone Owns At Least One Pair’: $75bn Sneaker Industry Unboxed In Gold Coast Exhibition
    What was the world’s first sneaker? Was it made in the 1830s, when the UK’s Liverpool Rubber Company fused canvas tops to rubber soles, creating beach footwear for the Victorian middle class? Or was it a few decades later, about 1870, with the invent
    The Guardian4 min read
    Lawn And Order: The Evergreen Appeal Of Grass-cutting In Video Games
    Jessica used to come for tea on Tuesdays, and all she wanted to do was cut grass. Every week, we’d click The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker’s miniature disc into my GameCube and she’d ready her sword. Because she was a couple of years younger than m
    The Guardian4 min read
    ‘Almost Like Election Night’: Behind The Scenes Of Spotify Wrapped
    There’s a flurry of activities inside Spotify’s New York City’s offices in the Financial District. “It’s almost like election night,” Louisa Ferguson, Spotify’s global head of marketing experience says, referring to a bustling newsroom. At the same t

    Related Books & Audiobooks