PIO British ISIS fighter may have been killed in Syria
LONDON: An Indian-origin British ISIS fighter may have been killed with his wife and five children by coalition airstrikes in Syria.
Siddhartha Dhar had been named as a specially designated global terrorist by the US department of state in January 2018.
Dhar is Bengali and has relatives in Benares and Lucknow. His mother and siblings, who live in north London, have not heard from him since June 2017.
An ISIS telegram channel, run by ISIS supporters, monitored by Danish ISIS PhD researcher Tore Hamming, has published a post by “Green birds of Paradise” which states: “abu rumaysah al-britani May Allah accept him”. Next to it are three photos of Dhar when he was alive, one masked and pointing a gun.
Dhar, who would now be 35, was born in London as a Hindu to Indian parents but switched to Islam at the age of 13 and changed his name to Abu Rumasayah. He got radicalised by a childhood friend, Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, a convicted Islamist militant, from the same north London neighbourhood.
Rahman then was a follower of Omar Bakri Muhammad, a Syrian Islamist militant currently in jail in Lebanon, and friends with Anjem Choudary, a convicted British ISIS activist and hate preacher.
Dhar became a leader in their banned terrorist organisation Al-Muhajiroun and married Islamist activist Pakistani-origin Aisha Tariq who he barely knew. They fled the UK together when she was pregnant in 2014, whilst Dhar was on police bail, with their four children and went to Syria. They then had a fifth child out in Syria.
Out in Syria Dhar is widely believed to have taken up the role of ISIS executioner Jihadi John, who was killed by drone strikes in 2015.
A WhatsApp message from an ISIS fighter in Syria, that TOI has seen, states Dhar “long passed away to the green gardens of paradise” and “he and his family were killed long ago”.
But significantly nether the message nor the telegram post show him dead.
“We do not know for sure if he has been killed. It could be a trick trying to convince us he is dead,” Hamming said.
“Sometimes it is done to protect the fighter if he is high-profile then it takes the pressure off him. There was a famous case of one of the terrorists behind the November 2015 Paris attacks who ISIS announced had been killed in Libya and then he emerged in that attack,” Hamming added.
“These messages do not have any details of where, how or when he died.”
No official bodies are tracking the deaths of foreign fighters and many destroy their identities after reaching Syria.
A spokesperson for Operation Inherent Resolve, the US-led coalition partners conducting airstrikes in the region, told TOI they do not keep records of individuals killed so there is no way they could verify if Dhar is dead or alive.
“There are foreign fighters left in Syria spread out across the desert between Syria and Iraq hiding in different places,” Hemming said. “ISIS is changing its strategy and going back to insurgency and hiding. The whole senior leadership is still alive. If Dhar is alive there is no way he can return to the UK as he will face many years in prison,” he added.
“Part of it sounds potentially suspicious. It is possible he’s amongst the foreign contingent still holed up in the last remaining ISIS pocket in Syria’s east,” said Charles Lister, senior fellow and director of the Countering Terrorism and Extremism Program at the Middle East Institute. “But there’s no way to know for sure without some real evidence,” Lister said.
According to the home office, more than 900 individuals have travelled from Britain to join ISIS in Syria. Of these, approximately 20% have been killed overseas and around 40% have returned to the UK.
“The majority of those who have returned, did so in the earlier stages of the conflict, and were investigated on their return. A significant proportion of these individuals are assessed as no longer being of national security concern,” the home office said.
Security minister Ben Wallace said this week: “Anyone who does travel to these areas for the purposes of supporting al-Qaida or Daesh should expect to be investigated and potentially prosecuted if they return to the UK.”
Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/nri/other-news/pio-british-isis-fighter-may-have-been-killed-in-syria/articleshow/68016059.cms
Siddhartha Dhar had been named as a specially designated global terrorist by the US department of state in January 2018.
Dhar is Bengali and has relatives in Benares and Lucknow. His mother and siblings, who live in north London, have not heard from him since June 2017.
An ISIS telegram channel, run by ISIS supporters, monitored by Danish ISIS PhD researcher Tore Hamming, has published a post by “Green birds of Paradise” which states: “abu rumaysah al-britani May Allah accept him”. Next to it are three photos of Dhar when he was alive, one masked and pointing a gun.
Dhar, who would now be 35, was born in London as a Hindu to Indian parents but switched to Islam at the age of 13 and changed his name to Abu Rumasayah. He got radicalised by a childhood friend, Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, a convicted Islamist militant, from the same north London neighbourhood.
Rahman then was a follower of Omar Bakri Muhammad, a Syrian Islamist militant currently in jail in Lebanon, and friends with Anjem Choudary, a convicted British ISIS activist and hate preacher.
Dhar became a leader in their banned terrorist organisation Al-Muhajiroun and married Islamist activist Pakistani-origin Aisha Tariq who he barely knew. They fled the UK together when she was pregnant in 2014, whilst Dhar was on police bail, with their four children and went to Syria. They then had a fifth child out in Syria.
Out in Syria Dhar is widely believed to have taken up the role of ISIS executioner Jihadi John, who was killed by drone strikes in 2015.
A WhatsApp message from an ISIS fighter in Syria, that TOI has seen, states Dhar “long passed away to the green gardens of paradise” and “he and his family were killed long ago”.
But significantly nether the message nor the telegram post show him dead.
“We do not know for sure if he has been killed. It could be a trick trying to convince us he is dead,” Hamming said.
“Sometimes it is done to protect the fighter if he is high-profile then it takes the pressure off him. There was a famous case of one of the terrorists behind the November 2015 Paris attacks who ISIS announced had been killed in Libya and then he emerged in that attack,” Hamming added.
“These messages do not have any details of where, how or when he died.”
No official bodies are tracking the deaths of foreign fighters and many destroy their identities after reaching Syria.
A spokesperson for Operation Inherent Resolve, the US-led coalition partners conducting airstrikes in the region, told TOI they do not keep records of individuals killed so there is no way they could verify if Dhar is dead or alive.
“There are foreign fighters left in Syria spread out across the desert between Syria and Iraq hiding in different places,” Hemming said. “ISIS is changing its strategy and going back to insurgency and hiding. The whole senior leadership is still alive. If Dhar is alive there is no way he can return to the UK as he will face many years in prison,” he added.
“Part of it sounds potentially suspicious. It is possible he’s amongst the foreign contingent still holed up in the last remaining ISIS pocket in Syria’s east,” said Charles Lister, senior fellow and director of the Countering Terrorism and Extremism Program at the Middle East Institute. “But there’s no way to know for sure without some real evidence,” Lister said.
According to the home office, more than 900 individuals have travelled from Britain to join ISIS in Syria. Of these, approximately 20% have been killed overseas and around 40% have returned to the UK.
“The majority of those who have returned, did so in the earlier stages of the conflict, and were investigated on their return. A significant proportion of these individuals are assessed as no longer being of national security concern,” the home office said.
Security minister Ben Wallace said this week: “Anyone who does travel to these areas for the purposes of supporting al-Qaida or Daesh should expect to be investigated and potentially prosecuted if they return to the UK.”
Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/nri/other-news/pio-british-isis-fighter-may-have-been-killed-in-syria/articleshow/68016059.cms
Comments