The mastermind pulling the strings behind the IS militants has been revealed.

On April 19, after a period of investigation, the German daily Der Spiegel published crucial data revealing that a former intelligence officer under the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was the mastermind behind the notorious Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq and Syria.

In a lengthy article titled "Secret Data Reveals the Origins of IS," Spiegel reported that its reporters had accessed 31 websites filled with documents, charts, and handwritten lists that formed a detailed plan for establishing an Islamic State in Syria.

This massive plan was the product of a man named Samir Adb Muhammad al-Khlifawi, a former intelligence colonel who served under Hussein and went by the codename Haji Bakr.

Iraqi soldiers who served under Saddam Hussein.

Spiegel stated that the documents confirm that IS's rise and seizure of vast areas in northern Syria was part of a meticulous plan devised and overseen by Haji Bakr, employing a range of methods from reconnaissance and espionage to murder and kidnapping.

Although this former intelligence colonel was killed in a fierce battle with Syrian rebels in January 2014, by then he had used his experience to build one of the world's most powerful and wealthy terrorist organizations.

Spiegel said: “What Bakr outlined on the websites was carefully planned with individual assignments, much like a detailed master plan for a takeover.”

"It is not a religious manifesto, but technically it is a specific roadmap for establishing an 'Islamic Intelligence State' operated by a unit similar to the former East German Stasi domestic intelligence agency," Spiegel wrote.

Was IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi merely a puppet set up by former Iraqi intelligence officers?

According to Spiegel, Bakr, once a powerful intelligence colonel, became a "bitterly unemployed man" after US authorities in Iraq issued an order to disband the entire army of the former regime in 2003. From 2006 to 2008, he was reportedly imprisoned in US prisons, including the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

Around 2011, Bakr assembled a small group of former Iraqi intelligence officers to "produce" Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the official leader of the Islamic State militants, in order to give this notorious terrorist organization a "religious face."

In 2013, Bakr personally traveled to northern Syria to oversee his territorial conquest strategy, which began with recruiting tens of thousands of young foreign fighters to Syria to join his rebel organization.

Iraqi journalist Hisham al-Hashimi, whose cousin served under Bakr, described the former intelligence colonel as more of a nationalist than a devout Muslim. Therefore, Spiegel argues that the key to IS's current expansion lies in its ability to reconcile its opposing forces: the blind religious faith of its followers with the careful strategic calculations of a group of intelligence officers led by Bakr.

Spiegel said they received the documents after lengthy negotiations with rebels in the Syrian city of Aleppo. Aleppo fell to rebels after ISIS was forced to withdraw from its bases in the city in early 2014.

According to danviet.vn