CNN: ISIS leader al-Baghdadi is the most influential in the Middle East

(IraqiNews.com) The leader of the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi received the highest percentage of vote of  the attendance in a discussion panel—organized by the CNN network in Dubai—about the most influential figures on the events in the Middle East this year.

Baghdadi was among 3 figures who received the largest percentage of votes in a referendum conducted by CNN in Arabic, in collaboration with Connect The World program, that is displayed on CNN, where the voting continued for a period of two weeks. The vote was focused on personals, who were most influential on the course of events in the Middle East, regardless of the political position toward them.

Attendants at the meeting—administered by broadcaster CNN Becky Anderson—had the choice to choose between Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, and refugees in the Middle East, in addition to al-Baghdadi, among a group of characters or symbols that CNN had nominated based on the readers’ veiws.

Voting rates came in the following form: Baghdadi 56.3%, refugees 23.2%, and the Saudi monarch 20.5%.

Noteworthy, the vote on these 3 characters were conducted after nearly 10,000 people participated in the referendum, where they had to choose three out of ten, in addition to those mentioned above: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, US President Barack Obama, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the first Emirati to lead a fighter jet Maryam Mansouri, Iranian President Hassan Rohani, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and foreign fighters extremists.