His bodyguards have been reported killed.
Shishani has falsely been reported killed many times. Three weeks ago it was reported he had arrived in Libya. It's also been reported that he recruited Jihadi John (Mohamed Emwazi), but it was also reported that Amr al Ibsi (killed last week) recruited him. My thoughts a few months ago:
My best guess is [Jihadi John] joined up with Amr al-Ibsi and with Chechen Omar al Shishani, when Shishani broke with Nusra and brought his immigrant fighter battallion to al Baghdadi and ISIS. It may be that it was al Ibsi, who was in charge of prisons, who made him a prison guard.
When he first got to Syria, he was with Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Answar. He split from that group and declared his allegiance to al Baghdadi. Those that went with him included a group of foreign fighters called Katibat al-Muhajireen (Emigrants Brigade), also known as the Muhajireen Brigade, which reportedly included "Jihadi John". When Emwazi's identity was first disclosed, I wrote:
Many of the British recruits attended training camps led by the Chechens who were part of Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar. Omar al Shishani left to align with ISIS, in November or December, 2013, some went with him and some stayed, aligned with al Nusra. One group with a lot of British and European fighters was Katiba al-Muhajireen (which folded in April, 2013 and merged with other groups.) Many eventually ended up with ISIS. Back then, ISIS sometimes ran training camps together with other groups.
But I wasn't sure if he was directly connected to al Shishani.
Is he connected to Omar al Shisani, Abu Ubayda al Madani or Abu al Athir Amr al Absi? There's a British jihadist in the al Madani video who sounds similar to Emwazi and says:
I represent from Britain here in the UK. We will fight the mushrikin, the murtadin, we will fight Bashar, we will fight the whole world until Allah is the highest.
Shishani led the ISIS battle that took the al Omar oil field from al Nusra on July 3, 2014. He also led ISIS in a fight against the Kurds in Kobane.
And he led the ISIS fighters in the takeover of Menagh air force base in Aleppo. Not everyone agreed he was a great leader in that attack.
Shishani has been reported captured or killed so many times it's hard to draw any conclusion from this week's conflicting reports.
The mother of another Chechen ISIS fighter, Khamzat Borchashvili, who was killed in Iraq, told an interesting story about Umar here. Umar's father had his say here. And Raffaello Pantucci of the Royal United Services Institute think tank, UK, wrote:
“Omar al-Shishani is the most prominent of the Caucasian fighters alongside ISIL and is seen as the leader of the foreign fighter brigades. We have seen how Brits and other Europeans have often been marshalled under his wing and the result is that he is elevated to be a figure of great significance in the mythology around the group and what it is doing, in particular in the imagery and videos they release. While his skills and abilities have been called into question by others, he has undeniably become the most prominent of the so-called Chechen fighters in Syria.”
So is he dead, injured, captured, or thousands of miles away in Libya? I'd like to hear what ISIS has to say, if anything, on the topic.