US doubles reward for capture of ISIS leader to $10 million

The United States has doubled its reward for the capture of the leader of ISIS to $10 million.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made the announcement on Wednesday.

The US had already offered $5 million for Mohammed Al Mawla last November before he was identified as the successor to Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, who was killed by US commandos in an October raid in Syria.

Born in 1976, Al Mawla, is a scholar in Islamic law who issued edicts to justify the persecution of the Yazidi people, a campaign that the United Nations has decried as genocide.

ISIS has killed thousands of Yazidis and abducted and enslaved thousands more women and girls in the Middle East.

In March the US government made Al Mawla a specially designated global terrorist.

“We remain committed to ISIS’s enduring defeat, no matter who they name as their leader,” Mr Pompeo said.

Al Mawla, of Iraqi-Turkmen descent, was appointed leader of the group after the killing of Al Baghdadi last October.

The State Department said Al Mawla was “active in ISIS’s predecessor organisation, Al Qaeda in Iraq, and steadily rose through the ranks of ISIS to become the deputy amir.”

“Al Mawla helped to drive and attempt to justify the abduction, slaughter, and trafficking of Yazidi religious minorities in north-west Iraq and oversees the group’s global operations,” the department said.

Last November, the US put a bounty of $5 million (Dh18.3m) for Al Mawla’s capture through its “rewards for justice” programme.

The highest amount it has offered stands at $25m which was for help in tracking down Al Baghdadi.

A report published this week revealed ISIS was responsible for almost all the deaths from terrorist attacks in Europe last year.