Iraqi grandmother ‘decapitated Isis fighters and cooked their heads’ to avenge her family’s death
‘I have shrapnel in my head and legs, my ribs were broken, but all that didn’t stop me from fighting’ -Wahida Mohamed Al-Jumaily-
An Iraqi grandmother claims to be one of the people most feared by Isis and has received personal death threats from the group’s leader.
Wahida Mohamed Al-Jumaily, 39, said she has beheaded and cooked the heads of Isis fighters to avenge the deaths of her family.
Isis killed her second husband earlier this year and has previously killed her father and three brothers.
Um Hanadi led her militia in the battle to help government forces drive Isis from Shirqat
Better known as Um Hanadi, she leads a 70-strong militia in the fight against Isis in the recently liberated town of Shirqat, which sits 50 miles south of the Isis’ Iraq stronghold of Mosul.
“I fought them, I beheaded them, I cooked their heads, I burned their bodies,” she told CNN.
The militia leader, who describes herself as a “housewife,” has published a photo on Facebook appearing to show her carrying a severed head, and another showing two severed heads in a cooking pot.
A third photo appears to show her standing among headless bodies which have been burned.
She said she head received personal death threats “from the top leadership of Isis,” she said, “including from [Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi himself”.
“I’m at the top of their most wanted list, even more than the Prime Minister,” she added.
“Six times they tried to assassinate me. I have shrapnel in my head and legs, my ribs were broken, but all that didn’t stop me from fighting,” she said in the interview, lifting her headscarf to reveal several scars.
Um Hanadi began fighting jihadists in 2004, she said, working with Iraqi forces and the coalition in the battle against al-Qaeda and later Isis.
General Jamaa Anad, commander of Iraqi ground forces in Salahuddin province, told CNN they had provided her group with vehicles and weapons.
“She lost her brothers and husbands as martyrs,” he said. “So out of revenge she formed her own force.”
Isis fighters are afraid of being killed by women, according to female Kurdish soldiers, because they believe it means they won’t go to heaven.
Terrified: Mrs Margaret Hassan was paraded before the cameras to beg for help before being shot dead weeks later (2004)
ISIS prisoner confesses to witnessing the final hours of a British aid worker murdered in Iraq … but escaped before he could lead police to her body or killers
Margaret Hassan, 59, was taken hostage and murdered in Baghdad in 2004
Aid worker’s body has not been found and her killers have evaded justice
ISIS prisoner stunned his interrogators by claiming to know ‘everything’
But he was freed by court on basis of forged documents
An ISIS prisoner stunned interrogators by claiming to have witnessed the final hours of a murdered British aid worker whose body has never been found or killers brought to justice.
Margaret Hassan was director of the humanitarian group Care International in Iraq when she was taken hostage in Baghdad in October 2004.
She was twice paraded before the cameras to beg for help before being shot dead on video by masked gunmen three weeks later.
No group has claimed responsibility and a combination of missed opportunities, bungled police work and judicial corruption has meant her murderers have evaded justice.
But a surprise confession by a militant brought in for questioning five months ago over his links to ISIS may hold the key to finally locating her body and finding those responsible.
Mustafa Amer, 23, described in shocking detail how he witnessed Mrs Hassan’s final moments when he was just a boy, around nine years old.
He told how she had been abducted by a Sunni criminal gang with insurgent and political links who were now fighting for ISIS or had links to the terror group, it was reported by The Times.
He kept talking about a ‘British Margaret’ and it took some time before it dawned on the interrogator who he was referring to.
Ali al-Sudani, a Colonel in the Iraqi military who questioned him in Tikrit, said: ‘He knew everything: who kidnapped her, where she was held, who killed her and where she is buried.’
But two weeks ago Amer was freed by a court on the basis of forged documents and Col al-Sudani says the authorities have done little to arrest her killers or find her grave.
