KYIV, Ukraine — Islamic State’s leader, killed by American commandos Thursday, was a largely reclusive figure with almost no public presence, despite heading the world’s most notorious terror group.
To the group’s adherents, he was known as Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, a nom de guerre he adopted when he became Islamic State’s self-styled caliph, one week after his predecessor, Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed in a raid in late 2019.
Unlike al-Baghdadi, al-Qurayshi (his last name was meant to link him to the tribe of the Prophet Muhammad) presided over a much diminished force, a shadow of the group that at its height in 2015 presided over a swath of territory the size of Britain, a so-called caliphate that encompassed a full third of Iraq and Syria each.
