The revelation that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State, was repeatedly raping an American hostage, Kayla Mueller, comes just after the Times released a devastating story about the use of rape as a form of religious devotion by Baghdadi’s followers. It’s not surprising that the mix of piety and depravity that characterizes this movement would emanate from the soul of its founder.

Mueller, who was twenty-four when she was captured in Aleppo in 2013, was held with two Yazidi sisters—the elder was fourteen—in the home of Abu Sayyaf, a senior ISIS commander, in the town of Al Shaddadeh, in eastern Syria. Like Mueller, the girls were physically and sexually abused, although they told a Dutch reporter, Judit Neurink, that Mueller often protected them from Sayyaf and others, sometimes at risk to herself. Baghdadi raped one of the Yazidi girls as well.

Last October, the Yazidi sisters escaped. They reportedly asked Kayla to go with them, but she said that she didn’t want to put them at risk with her obviously Western appearance. The girls made it to Kurdistan, where, a month later, they were questioned by American intelligence officials.

On May 16th, Delta Force, an élite special-operations unit, conducted a raid on the Sayyaf house that resulted in the death of Sayyaf and the capture of his wife, Umm Sayyaf, who may have handled the slave trade for ISIS. Umm Sayyaf has reportedly been coöperating with American authorities. Baghdadi was apparently not present during the raid.

The White House refuses to comment on what was known about Baghdadi’s frequent visits to the Sayyaf house and his treatment of Mueller, but the raid came too late for her. ISIS claims that she died in a weapons warehouse that it controls, on February 6th. It’s not clear why she would have been there or what she was doing outside of the Sayyaf house. The warehouse was near Raqqa, the nominal capital of the Islamic State, more than a hundred miles from Sayyaf’s home but much closer to Baghdadi’s likely headquarters.

When I wrote about American hostages and their families’ struggles to rescue them, Lisa Monaco, President Barack Obama’s homeland-security adviser, told me that Mueller’s death was the result of “a bombing that we don’t know the provenance of.” Today, a U.S. official told me that the warehouse was struck by the Royal Jordanian Air Force, “with support of U.S. military aircrews.” The Jordanians were responding to the execution of one of their pilots, who had been burned alive by ISIS. The site had been bombed previously by coalition forces, and was heavily damaged. Why it would be targeted again is a mystery, as is Mueller’s presence there. The fact that the site was already partially destroyed might have made it seem safe from future attacks.

The White House claims that it was not targeting Baghdadi, and he was apparently not in the ruined facility when the Jordanians bombed it again. The White House is still not saying whether Mueller died as a result of the bombing, adding, “The U.S. military has indicated there was no evidence of civilians in the target area prior to any Coalition airstrikes at that time. What we are certain of is that ISIL is responsible for Kayla’s captivity and death.”

Today would have been Mueller’s twenty-seventh birthday.