Saja al-Dulaimi, 28, one of two wives of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, spoke of her relationship with the world’s most wanted man in a recent interview with Swedish media, Expressen.
“I married a normal person, a university lecturer,” al-Dulaimi said in the interview, conducted in a hidden location in Lebanon. “He was a family man.”
Born in Iraq, al-Dulaimi says when she met al-Baghdadi he wasn’t a terrorist. al-Dulaimi was a widow with young twin boys when she met al-Baghdadi, although he went by Hisham Mohammed back then, she said.
A while later, al-Baghdadi found out about the pregnancy and told al-Dulaimi he'd take their daughter if she remarries, according to her account to Expressen.
Worried for her daughter’s safety, al-Dulaimi says she is scared of everyone, and hopes she can move to a European country where her daughter can get an education.
“She [her daughter] has the entire world’s disaster upon her shoulders,” she said. “Even if her mother was married to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a terrorist ... what is the child guilty of there?”
And although labeled a terrorist who will always be known as Baghdadi’s ex-wife, al-Dulaimi says she should be accepted in Europe.
“Where is my guilt if I was married to him in 2008? We’re divorced now. I was the one who left him,” she told the publication.
Arrested in December of 2014, al-Dulaimi says she suffered in prison for a year, and is now wanting to settle down.
“If I‘d wanted to live with him, I’d have lived like a princess,” she said. “I could’ve moved in with them and had loads of money, but I don’t want money. I want to live in freedom.”
