DNA tests have confirmed that the child held by Lebanese authorities is the daughter of the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Lebanon’s Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk told domestic television channel MTV that the child’s mother is believed to have married to al-Baghdadi six years ago for a period of three months, the BBC reports.
The Iraqi government had said she was not married to the Islamist leader.
The woman, identified as Saja al-Dulaimi, tried to enter Lebanon over a week ago accompanied by two sons and a daughter when she was detained by border guards.
Machnouk claims al-Dulaimi is pregnant but the child is not al-Baghdadi’s.
“We conducted DNA tests on her and the daughter, which showed she was the mother of the girl, and that the girl is [al-Baghdadi’s] daughter, based on DNA from Baghdadi from Iraq,” Machnouk told MTV.
Machnouk said the children were staying at a care center while al-Dulaimi was being interrogated.
[BBC]
- AI Is Not an Arms Race
- Here's What's in the Debt Ceiling Deal
- Matthew Macfadyen on Succession Series Finale
- How Worried Should the World Be of China's New COVID Wave?
- What Erdoğan’s Victory Means for Turkey—and the World
- Why Everyone Is Having Bad Sex (Especially Young People)
- The 30 Most Anticipated Movies of Summer 2023
- Florence Pugh Might Just Save the Movie Star From Extinction
