Expressen's Middle East Correspondent Kassem Hamade interviewed Saja al-Dulaimi, 28, who was married to the self-proclaimed IS Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Saja grew up in a conservative upper class family in Baghdad.

Expressen's Middle East Correspondent Kassem Hamade interviewed Saja al-Dulaimi, 28, who was married to the self-proclaimed IS Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Saja grew up in a conservative upper class family in Baghdad.



 The Syrian security police claim that Sajas father is one of the leaders of the terrorist group al-Nusrafronten (al-Qaeda) in Syria. Her first husband was named Falah Ismail al-Jasim, and was a lieutenant in Saddam Hussein's bodyguard force. After the fall of the regime, he started and some army generals resistance movement Jaish al-Rashedin, who fought against US troops in Iraq. A year after their marriage, he was killed in battle, and Saja had sole responsibility for their twin boys, Omar and Osama. One day, said her aunt's husband to her father that he knew a man who was looking for a widow to marry.


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- I did not know him, but my father blessed marriage. I married a regular person, a university teacher. Then his name was Hisham Muhammad. I did not notice that he was active in some way. I moved in with him and where we lived. It was he, I and my children and his first wife, with their children. It was tough to stay many in the same apartment. We lived very crowded, but I did not know where I was going after my first husband died.

- He did not tell me much about his background. He was mysterious and taciturn. He spent the day at the university where he taught religion and Sharia. We met in the evening when we were eating dinner. Sometimes he disappeared for a few days. He said he visited his brother. He loved children. He was their idol. He was an excellent person that way, but my relationship with him was superficial. He was an ordinary family man, it's a mystery how he could be the Emir of IS.

- No, I did not love him. He was an enigmatic person. Failed to discuss or conduct a normal conversation with him. He just asked about things and asked me to fetch things. He gave the order, nothing more.

- I had been pregnant for a month without me and he knew it. I left him after only three months. Yes, one can say that I escaped from him. It had nothing to do with him as a person to do. I did not like it. It was unfair to his first wife. He had not told his first wife that he would take another wife. She was very sorry. Therefore, I moved back to my first husband's family in Baghdad. The last conversation between me and al-Baghdadi was in 2009. He asked if I wanted to come back. But I had made my decision. He said he wanted Hagar back if I marry me, but I could keep her until then.

- It was in Lebanon I got the shocking news. They showed me pictures of my ex-husband and asked if I recognized him. It turned out that I was married to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the world's most dangerous man. I smashed a window in anger. IS is murder, blood and brutality. I think as a mother that what they do is terrorism. If someone does my son badly, he is a terrorist. Every mother thinks so. Where is my guilt? I was married to him in 2008, now we're divorced. It was I who left him. I am a woman who has gone through a lot and who suffered in prison.

- It was an old dream to move to Lebanon. It's all Arab women dream to stay in Beirut, civilization and freedom of residence. I had the opportunity to stay in the militantas areas, but I chose Lebanon for the sake of my children.

Now you want Saja to the West. She does not want to remain in the Arab world. But if she is forced to choose between living in Saudi Arabia and Beirut, she would "naturally" choose Beirut.


Is not it strange that the Arabs would rather live in the West than in a Muslim country? One wonders if she expects to pull down the whole thick genera, then all Al-Qaeda chiefs and IS-caliphs to Europe, now that the ground starts to burn under the feet of Syria and Iraq?
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