The ISIS Chief Executioner!

 

His rugged good looks are winning the hearts of women across the Arab Middle East.


Yet he appears in grotesque videos that show him interrogating and executing prisoners in the most unpleasant ways. 

Referred to as the 'Desert Lion' by his supporters, Shakir Wahiyib  is the public face of the army threatening to destroy Iraq and is the chief executioner of the ISIS terror group.

Unlike many other commanders in the Islamist militant organisation, he appears on camera without covering his face.

Little is known about Wahiyib, however, his tribal surname – Fahdawi – suggests he is from the Anbar-based Albu Fahd tribe, known to US forces as one of the ‘sinister six’ that first allied with al-Qaeda after Saddam Hussein's fall.

Wahiyib, who is thought to be in his late-20s, first gained notoriety through a chilling video which surfaced on jihadist websites last summer, showing him and his gang executing three Syrian lorry drivers who had been driving through ISIS territory in Anbar.

But in other pictures he is seen accepting flowers from a child, gently holding a bird of prey, and staring contemplatively into the middle distance while brandishing a rocket-propelled grenade.

Wahiyib's men have made significant gains in northern Iraq and are now marching on the capital Baghdad. 

According to the Telegraph, Armoured convoys containing U.S.-trained soldiers – who mysteriously melted away in earlier confrontations – stormed towards the town of Balad, some 50 miles outside of the capital Baghdad.

The soldiers told of a gruelling fight with  ‘crazy, ruthless’ militants who were determined to hold their recent gains even at the cost of their lives.

Over the past week ISIS made dramatic gains in the Sunni heartland north of Baghdad after overrunning Iraq's second-largest city of Mosul on Tuesday.

Soldiers and policemen melted away in the face of the lightning advance, and thousands have fled to the self-ruled Kurdish region in northern Iraq - prompting condemnation and threats of harsh punishment from senior politicians.

The collapse this week started at the top with the senior-most commanders abandoning their positions early on Tuesday morning as black-clad Isis fighters swept into the country's second city of Mosul.

After they seized Falluja and other areas of Anbar late last year, Iraqi medical sources say some 6,000 soldiers died there. Iraq-based foreign diplomats say 12,000 deserted their posts.

In February, the leader of al-Qaeda issued a statement dissociating itself from Isis, which it accused of 'forbidden bloodshed' directed at fellow fighters.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's chief, cut ties after Isis attempted to bolster its strength by merging with other rebels in Syria.

He said: 'We weren't informed about its creation, nor counselled. Nor are we satisfied with it: rather we ordered it to stop... Nor is al–Qaeda responsible for its actions and behaviour.'

Islamist militants in Iraq have boasted of slaughtering dozens of Iraqi soldiers captured in the fighting which has consumed the country in recent days.

Pictures posted on a militant website appear to show masked fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) forcing captives to lie down in a shallow ditch.