London: The senior-most Islamic State (ISIS) female operative in captivity in Iraq has claimed that she played a central role in the US-led coalition's hunt for the terrorist network's chief, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Nisrine Assad Ibrahim, better known by her ISIS name of Umm Sayyaf, claims she helped identify safe houses used by the fugitive terrorist leader and in one case even pinpointing his location in Mosul, the Guardian newspaper reported on Saturday from the Kurdish city of Erbil in Iraq. The claims that she helped CIA and Kurdish intelligence build detailed portraits of Baghdadi's movements, hideouts and networks, emerged in Sayyaf's first interview since being captured in a Delta Force raid in Syria four years ago that killed her husband, the then ISIS oil minister. "I told them where the house was. I knew he'd (Baghdadi) been there because it was one of the houses that was provided for him, and one of the places he liked the most," she recalled.

The 29-year-old is a highly controversial figure who has been accused of involvement in some of the terror group's most heinous crimes, including the enslavement of the captured US aid worker Kayla Mueller and several Yazidi women and girls, who were raped by senior ISIS leaders. She was sentenced to death by a court in Erbil and spoke to the Guardian, partly through a translator, at a prison in the city. She was accompanied by a Kurdish intelligence officer who made no attempt to intervene in the interview, the newspaper said. Leading international human rights lawyer Amal Clooney has requested Sayyaf's transfer from Iraq to the US to face justice for her crimes. She told the UN Security Council in April that Sayyaf "locked them (the captives) in a room, instigated their beatings and put makeup on them to 'prepare them for rape'."