History[edit]

He is sometimes confused as being Saudi Arabian due to the 'al-Najdi' in his name (Najd being a region of Saudi Arabia), but he was an Iraqi from the city of Tikrit as indicated by his surname. He is not to be confused with Abu Habib al-Jazrawi, a deceased Saudi IS leader in Libya.


He replaced Abu Nabil al-Anbari who was killed in November 2015.^[2] His appointment was announced in the IS newsletter al-Naba in March 2016.^[3]


The Libyan National Army (LNA) reported in September 2020 that during a raid in Sebha, it had killed the man who had led the Libyan branch of ISIS since 2015 who they identified as Abu Moaz al-Iraqi, also known as Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi.^[4]