9. Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi
As the former leader of the ISIS forces, we know the most about this terrifying individual. Profiled in Time magazine on their Person of the Year 2015 short list, al-Baghdadi shaped former members and leaders of al-Qaeda into a prominent force who operated in facilitating the chaos in both Syria and Iraq. He is personally responsible for the murder of over 1,200 non-military civilians outside of Iraq and Syria in 2015 alone. He was most feared for his success in recruiting thousands of ISIS military fighters and inspiring hundreds of suicide bombers used for combat maneuvers and strategic targeting of both military and innocent civilian populations. He was born into a middle-class Sunni Muslim family in Iraq back in 1971, and adopted the name al-Baghdadi years later. Although rumors of his death caused by U.S.-led airstrikes surfaced in early 2015, the Pentagon still holds that the fate of al-Baghdadi is largely unknown.
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