U.S. charges ISIS leader's widow in death of Kayla Mueller

U.S. federal prosecutors filed charges on Monday against the Iraqi wife of a high-ranking Islamic State official accused of holding Kayla Mueller hostage in Syria.

Mueller, an aid worker from Prescott, Arizona, was abducted from Damascus, Syria, in 2013. She was killed in Syria in February 2015; ISIS claims she died after a Jordanian fighter jet dropped a bomb on the building she was in, while U.S. intelligence officials have said they still do not know how she was killed. Umm Sayyaf, also known as Nisreen Assad Ibrahim Bahar, was charged in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, with conspiring to provide material support to a designated terrorist organization resulting in death. Her husband, Fathi ben Awn ben Jildi Murad al-Tunisi, also known as Abu Sayyaf, was killed during a raid in eastern Syria last May. Umm Sayyaf was captured and taken to Irbil, where she was questioned by the FBI-led High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, The Washington Post reports.

An affidavit by FBI Special Agent William H. Heaney gives more insight into what life was like for Mueller as a hostage. Umm Sayyaf said she was responsible, along with her husband, for Mueller beginning in September 2014, and she suspected Mueller was either being held for ransom or a prisoner exchange. Her home was used to store money ISIS made from oil and firearms, and sometimes ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi stayed there. Mueller was abused and raped by al-Baghdadi, the affidavit says, and forced to watch ISIS propaganda videos. Along with other captives, she was at times handcuffed and kept in locked rooms, the affidavit states, and called an "infidel" by Umm Sayyaf.

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The Iraqis took custody of Umm Sayyaf in August, and while it's unlikely she will ever be brought to the United States, officials say if she is ever part of a prisoner exchange, she can be arrested by the FBI on the federal charges, the Post reports.