(CNN) — The Lebanese military has detained a wife of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a regional source with knowledge of the case told CNN.
News agencies Reuters and Agence France-Presse reported, citing unidentified Lebanese security officials, said one of al-Baghdadi’s sons was also detained. And the detentions took place near Lebanon’s border with Syria when they tried to enter the country.
The detentions took place near Lebanon’s border with Syria, the news agencies Reuters and Agence France-Presse reported, citing unidentified Lebanese security officials.
No details were available on the names or nationalities of the woman or the son. Lebanese authorities didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from CNN.
It was unclear when the two were picked up by Lebanese forces — Reuters said it happened “in recent days,” AFP reported it was 10 days ago.
“It’s certainly a new dynamic because we’ve never seen anybody connected so close to al-Baghdadi being detained,” terrorism expert Sajjan M. Gohel told CNN.
But the reports raise a lot of questions about what the family members might have been doing in Lebanon.
“Is he estranged from them? Has he fallen out with them? Were they escaping from him?” said Gohel, who is the international security director at the Asia Pacific Foundation.
Reports of injury
Very little is known about al-Baghdadi, whose militant group has imposed its extremist version of Islam on wide swathes of Iraq and Syria. Its gains and bloodthirsty tactics have provoked a campaign of airstrikes from the United States and other nations.
Al-Baghdadi is believed to frequently travel between Syria and Iraq. There were unconfirmed suggestions last month that he’d been wounded in airstrikes in northern Iraq.
But days later, an audio recording emerged that purportedly contained a message from al-Baghdadi saying the U.S.-led coalition to destroy ISIS is “terrified, weak and powerless.”
The ISIS leader has gone by a variety of aliases during his career in terrorism. It’s not clear how many wives and children he might have.
The U.S. State Department’s Reward’s for Justice program, which refers to him as “Abu Du’a,” offers $10 million for information leading to his arrest.
Once held in U.S. custody
According to the U.S. government, al-Baghdadi was born in Samarra, Iraq, and is in his early 40s.
During the U.S. occupation of Iraq, al-Baghdadi was taken into custody in the flashpoint city of Fallujah in February 2004, according to the Pentagon.
There have been conflicting reports about why he was detained and for how long. The Pentagon said he was held until December 2004 in a prison at Camp Bucca.
After the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011, al-Baghdadi issued a eulogy in which he threatened violent retribution.
His terrorist group, al Qaeda in Iraq, changed its name last year to ISIS — the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — and later broke away from al Qaeda’s leadership.
‘He’s created this myth’
ISIS made rapid, murderous advances over large areas of Iraq and Syria this year. In June, it announced the creation of a caliphate led by al-Baghdadi, saying it would now refer to itself simply as the Islamic State.
Al-Baghdadi became its spiritual leader and sought to burnish his theological credentials. A biography posted on jihadist websites last year said he had earned a doctorate in Islamic studies from a university in Baghdad.
“His knowledge in Islamic jurisprudence is somewhat dubious, but nevertheless he’s created this myth and this aura behind him,” Gohel said.
Lebanon is one of the countries heavily affected by the floods of refugees who have fled the years-long Syrian conflict.
Lebanese authorities “have been cracking down very heavily on the border to prevent members of ISIS seeping into Lebanon,’ Gohel said. “They don’t want the problems spilling over from Iraq and Syria into their territory.”
