Abu Omar al-Shishani

Tarkhan Tayumurazovich Batirashvili was born in the Georgian SSR, Soviet Union (now Georgia) in 1986. His father, Teimuraz Batirashvili, was a Muslim Kist—an ethnic Chechen subgroup from Georgia's Pankisi Gorge—of the Mastoy clan. His mother was an ethnic Georgian Orthodox Christian.[3][17][18]

Batirashvili grew up in the largely Kist-populated Muslim village of Birkiani, in the Pankisi Gorge in an impoverished region of northeast Georgia. He was one of three sons, all of whom would convert to Islam against their mother's wishes later in life. During his childhood, his father was rarely present, as he spent long periods of time working in Russia, and the children were mostly raised by their mother.[19] In his youth, he worked as a shepherd in the hills above the gorge. Later in the 1990s, the Pankisi Gorge was a major transit point for rebels participating in the Second Chechen War, and it was there that Batirashvili reportedly came into contact with the Chechen rebels moving into Russia.[20] According to his father, a young Batirashvili secretly helped Chechen militants into Russia and sometimes joined them on missions against Russian troops.[4]

After finishing high school, Batirashvili joined the Georgian Army and distinguished himself as master of various weaponry and maps, according to his former commander Malkhaz Topuria, who recruited him into a special reconnaissance group.[4] His unit received training at the Krtsanisi National Training Centre, which included training with US special forces. Batirashvili was reportedly a "star pupil".[21] He rose to the rank of sergeant in a newly formed intelligence unit, and during the 2008 Russo-Georgian War he served near the front line in the Battle of Tskhinvali, spying on Russian tank columns and relaying their coordinates to Georgian artillery units.[4] According to Business Insider, Batirashvili's unit inflicted serious damage on the Russians, and among the actions they participated in was an attack on a column of the Russian 58th Army during which the commander of the 58th Army, General Anatoly Khrulyov, was wounded.[21]

Batirashvili was never decorated for his military service.[3] He was due to be promoted to become an officer, but in 2010 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. After spending several months in a military hospital, he was discharged on medical grounds. He tried and failed to re-enlist.[4][20] Upon returning home, he applied for a job in the local police force and was rejected. Around this time, his mother also died of cancer. According to his father, he became "very disillusioned".[4]

According to the Georgian Defense Ministry, Batirashvili was arrested in September 2010 for illegal possession of weapons and sentenced to three years in prison.[4] He was released after serving in early 2012 and immediately left the country. According to an interview on a jihadist website, Batirashvili said that prison transformed him; "I promised God that if I come out of prison alive, I'll go fight jihad for the sake of God", he said.[4]

Batirashvili reportedly told his father that he was leaving for Istanbul, where members of the Chechen diaspora were ready to recruit him to lead fighters inside war-ravaged Syria; an older brother had already gone to Syria some months before.[4] In an interview, Batirashvili said that he had considered going to Yemen and briefly lived in Egypt before ultimately arriving in Syria in March 2012.[22][23]

Batirashvili was reported killed on numerous occasions. In 2014, there were reports that he had been killed in various parts of Syria and Iraq in May, June, August and October, all of which proved to be untrue.[36] On 13 November 2014, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov posted on his personal Instagram account that Batirashvili had been killed, and posted a photo of a dead ginger-bearded man. However, the man in the photograph was not Batirashvili, and Kadyrov later deleted the post. Before the post was deleted, the statement was picked up and reported on by many media outlets around the world.[36] The US Treasury Department added Batirashvili to its list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists on 24 September 2014.[12] On 5 May 2015, The U.S. State Department Rewards for Justice Program announced a reward up to US$5 million for information leading to his capture.[13][14]

There were further reports of his death in 2015: in May,[37] June[38] and October. On December 27, Russian News Agency TASS, quoting EIN news, claimed that American special forces had captured Batirashvili near Kirkuk in Iraq.[39] This report was denied by a US Department of Defense spokesman.[40]

In March 2016, several unnamed U.S. officials told CNN that Batirashvili may have been killed in a targeted airstrike on 4 March near the Syrian town of al-Shadadi; however, they were unable to confirm his death. Other officials said that he had been "critically injured" in the strike, and that U.S. military intelligence were assessing whether or not he had died.[41][42] On 12 March, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that Batirashvili had become clinically dead following the U.S. airstrikes, with the ISIL commander in a critical condition and unable to breathe without the use of life-support machines.[43][44] On 14 March 2016, two U.S. officials told CNN that there was confirmation that Batirashvili had died after the airstrike.[45][46] A U.S. military spokesman erroneously "confirmed" that Batirashvili had died outside ISIL's main stronghold of Raqqa in Syria.[47] ISIL's media wing Amaq News Agency in a released statement denied that he had been killed.[48]

On 13 July 2016, ISIL announced that Batirashvili had died during battle in the town of Al-Shirqat in Iraq.[16] The U.S. admitted that their previous claim of killing Batirashvili was incorrect and that they had targeted him again on 10 July 2016.[49] They were still trying to verify whether Batirashvili had been really killed this time.[50] U.S. President Barack Obama confirmed Batirashvili's death during a press conference a month later.[51]

On 19 July 2018, Turkish authorities announced that they captured five ISIL suspects on 4 July in Istanbul including Seda Dudurkaeva, wife of Batirashvili, whose father is Asu Dudurkaev of Chechen origin and clan Mulko/Chanti, a former Chechen minister, who was sacked by Ramzan Kadyrov from his position due to his failure to prevent his daughter from travelling to join her first husband, Hamzat Borchashvili,[52] in Syria.[53][54] On 24 July, Batirashvili's older brother, Tamaz Batirashvili, died from his wounds after being injured by a US-led airstrike in town of al-Shadadi four months earlier.[55][56][57]