The United States announced that it is labeling the Islamic State group’s new leader a “specially designated global terrorist.”
The State Department in a Tuesday press release that Amir Muhammad Sa’id Abdal-Rahman al Mawla would receive the designation. Al Mawla has been identified as the new leader of ISIS after Abu Bakr al Baghdadi was killed in October during an operation by U.S. special operations forces.
“As a result of this designation, U.S. persons will be generally prohibited from engaging in any transactions with al Mawla, and al Mawla’s property and interests in property subject to U.S. jurisdiction will be blocked,” the department said.
The State Department is offering a $5 million reward for information that can bring al Mawla to justice. Al Mawla was a “religious scholar” within ISIS’s predecessor organization, al Qaeda in Iraq.
He was born in a city in northern Iraq to an ethnic Turkmen family, and his religious rulings “helped drive and justify the abduction, slaughter, and trafficking of the Yazidi religious minority in northwest Iraq.”