In a stunning revelation by the journalist Jenan Moussa, the compound where Baghdadi was holed up and later died by detonating a suicide vest had an Internet connection. Baghdadi was hiding in a nondescript compound in the Barisha town of Idlib district in northern Syria.
1/ #EXCLUSIVE This is big: Documents I obtained show #Baghdadi compound in Barisha had internet connection.
Internet installed on 1/2/2019. Connection username: mhrab. Until 12hrs before U.S. raid, residents of compound were connected. I also got docs with IP addresses.@akhbar pic.twitter.com/lgO9tYWFs6
— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) November 13, 2019
The Internet connection was bought by the owner of the compound-Abu Muhammad al-Halabi via a local Internet provider in Idlib city. Internet reaches Barisha town in Syria from Turkey. From Barisha, the Internet reaches Idlib through several antennas. Through Idlib, with the use of several antennas, the connection reached the Barisha town where former ISIS chief had taken refuge. Baghdadi’s compound was 5 kms away from border separating Turkey and Syria.
According to Moussa, the Internet connection was subscribed and bought under the name of the compound owner-Abu Muhammad al-Halabi. The cost of the connection was 5000 Syrian pounds per month that are equivalent to USD 8 per month. According to the documents, the Internet connection was activated on February 1 this year. It was still active when the US troops attacked the compound in the wee hours of October 27, 2019.
The username of the connection was ‘mhrab’ and hours before the US attack, the residents of the compound had accessed Internet 7 times for the total of 1 hour 29 minutes and 34 seconds.
The documents show that around 211 GBs of download was consumed so far while 11 GBs were uploaded via the Internet connection.
Though the documents do not conclusively prove that Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi himself was using the Internet but it does show that the compound where he had taken shelter was connected to the Internet sourced from Turkey and it was used by the residents until 12 hours before the US raid took place.
