JIHADIS WHO STREET GANG
dred Britons. On April 5, 2014, for the first time, twins Abdul and Abdullah spent their 18th birthdays three time zones apart.
After some hurried weapons training, the Brightonians had been sent to the frontline near the Mediterranean coast in Syria and ordered to attack the enemy’s supply lines close to the towering summit of Mount Chalma.
As they set off, fighting was audible in the distant towns below, deeper into enemy territory. Out in front was Abdullah.
A ferocious burst of firing erupted from a line of trees just ahead. Bullets whistled past, snapping the branches of trees, pinging off rocks. To his left, Amer noticed a figure moving ahead, hunched at first but now running full-pelt towards the enemy. He saw Abdullah, out on his own, chasing the regime troops down the mountainside. He could hear his younger brother shouting, the withdrawing forces screaming back in terror.
Abdullah kept going, pursuing the enemy like he once chased rival gangs along Marine Parade, Brighton.
Then Amer heard the crack of a sniper rifle and watched his younger brother tumble to the ground. By the time they reached him,Abdullah Deghayes was dead. Back in Brighton, having heard the news via social media, HSG members gathered to mourn. A Facebook group explaining the teenager “sadly passed away fighting for what he believed in” materialised. Within a few weeks it had more than 1,300 likes. Among those who had discussed travelling to Syria, some were adamant they should go to avenge his death. Others said it demonstrated the lethal reality of Syria. Abdullah had survived just 59 days there. More immediately, his death left a vacuum in the senior echelons of the gang.
Many of its younger members and coterie of female admirers were bewildered their leader would not be coming home.
Police received reports of groups of teenagers across the city mourning their “elder”. During one incident a group of 12 to 14-year-olds told police that “Abdullah was murdered” by the Syrian dictator and asked if Sussex Police could help.
Over the months that followed, more Brighton jihadis were killed in Syria. Three died in the space of seven months.
After Abdullah’s death, Ibrahim Kamara was killed by the US’s first major intervention of the conflict, flattened by a £1.3million Tomahawk cruise missile as he slept.
Weeks later, Jaffar Deghayes was killed in an attempt to capture Idlib city on October 28 after volunteering to be part of a highrisk operation that his commanders warned would mean certain death.
At 17 years and 174 days, the most studious of the Deghayes brothers was the youngest Briton to die in Syria. Later, Mo
Khan, Amer’s friend, died in the highprofile operation to reclaim Aleppo in December 2016.The 22-year-old died in the twisted ruins of a tower block destroyed by a Russian shell.
Their deaths finally prompted on the gang in Brighton.
Passports were confiscated, some of the youngsters were made wards of court or placed in secure accommodation to stop them travelling.
Tacrackdown
HE Brothers’ Gym, its popularity waning, finally closed. A number of converts had stopped going to the mosque altogether and others were becoming less pious. Of the close-knit friends who had travelled to Syria, Amer was now alone out there.
But he had no regrets – or never admitted any – about his decision to fight in Syria. Still there today, neither did he believe that the lives of his four Brighton comrades had been in vain.
When we spoke via the Telegram messaging app, the line fading in and out, Amer told me: “They died as martyrs. They sold their life for Allah’s way of life, the greatest reward.”
Back in the UK, the security services have re-examined the case, determined to avoid a repeat. Although other individuals like Shamima Begum and the Bethnal Green schoolgirls from east London who joined Isis were more high-profile, within the Home Office the Brighton episode was considered the most alarming example of radicalisation.
In Brighton itself, the case hung over the city like a black cloud. Friends of those who had died in Syria blamed the authorities for letting them leave. Some felt they had been deliberately allowed to travel.
But the tragedy swirling around the Deghayes brothers did not end there. In 2018, Mohammed was sentenced to four years in prison for drug dealing.
Then Abdul, who had once hoped to join his siblings in the Middle East, died after being stabbed eight times during an alleged drugs deal, a death as brutal and abrupt as that of his twin,Abdullah, in Syria.
No Return: The True Story Of How Martyrs Are Made by Mark Townsend (Guardian Faber Publishing, £12.99) is out now. For free UK delivery, call the Express Bookshop on 01872 562310 or order via expressbookshop.co.uk. Please note delivery may be up to 28 days. Cheques/ PO are no longer accepted.