
Fathi ben Awn ben Jildi Murad al-Tunisi (died 16 May 2015), also known as Abu Sayyaf, was an emir of the Islamic State who was a key leader of command and control activities and was also responsible for the sale of IS oil, which funded the terrorist group.
Biography[]
Fathi ben Awn ben Jildi Murad al-Tunisi was born in Tunisia, and he became a leader of the Islamic State. He had a senior role in overseeing the gas and oil operations of the Islamic State, selling the vital resources to other countries in exchange for funding for Islamic State fighters. He was also involved in command-and-control operations with his wife Umm Sayyaf, and the two kept a young Yazidi woman as a slave. In May 2015, with full authorization by the government of Iraq, the United States Delta Force launched an operation to capture al-Tunisi to gather intelligence on the Islamic State. They raided the al-Omar oil field to find him, as he had deep knowledge of IS operations and was known to have had direct contact with Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The Delta Force team of 24 men killed 12 IS fighters, and al-Tunisi was gunned down while he resisted capture. His wife was captured along with several useful intelligence items, and the Americans freed their Yazidi slave. This was the first US ground operation aimed against IS fighters specifically (there had been a previous failed rescue attempt of hostages).