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  • 2016-06-18 (xsd:date)
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  • Does This Photograph Show John McCain Meeting Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi? (en)
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  • In May 2013, Senator John McCain of Arizona undertook a trip to northern Syria, where he met and posed for photographs with members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), an opposition group founded in 2011 during the Syrian Civil War with the intent of bringing down the government of Syrian president Bashar Hafez al-Assad. The month before Senator McCain's trip, the Obama administration had promised to provide military assistance to opposition fighters in Syria: Later reports indicated that elements of the FSA were both battling ISIS militants and defecting to ISIS, the latter prompting the online circulation of photographs from Senator McCain's Syrian visit along with rumors that the senator had posed for photographs with ISIS militants. In particular, one photograph was said to show Senator McCain posing with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the 1st Emir (and later the leader) of ISIS: However, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was extremely unlikely to have been hanging around an FSA stronghold posing for photographs with an American politician in May 2013, and the person seen in the background of the above-displayed photograph (identified with a red circle) bears only a passing resemblance to al-Baghdadi, who in recent years has been sporting a full beard: Moreover, as the New York Times reported, the ISIS leader seen in the photograph with Senator McCain was actually the commander of another Syrian rebel group allied with the FSA, not al-Baghdadi: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was reported to have died during a military operation in Syria in October 2019. (en)
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