Washington: The US-led coalition fighting Islamic State confirmed that it killed a top Islamic State group cleric Turki al-Bin’ali, the group’s self-proclaimed ‘Grand Mufti’ in an air strike in Syria.
Binali was one of the extremist group’s leading ideologues. He was the IS’s most visible preachers and regularly appeared in its propaganda videos.
He wrote religious justifications for the enslavement of thousands of women from Iraq’s Yazidi minority and helped establish the ISIS branch in Libya.
According to the United States Department of the Treasury, “Binali is a recruiter for ISIL foreign fighters, and provides literature and fatwas for ISIL training camps and has written several pamphlets to recruit more fighters to ISIL, including the first call for Muslims to pledge allegiance to ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as caliph”.
The US-led coalition released a statement on Tuesday that Bin’ali was killed in the Syrian town of Mayadeen,Syria on May 31.