British terrorist Jihadi Sid ‘died in Syrian siege’
ONE of Britain’s most notorious jihadis is believed to have been killed in Syria.
Siddartha Dhar, who was born in London, died with his wife Aisha during the siege of Islamic State’s de facto capital Raqqa in June 2017, a new book claims. The fate of the couple’s five young children, including one born after they fled to Syria, is not known.
The claims about Dhar, who was nicknamed ‘Jihadi Sid’, are made in a book about Al- Muhajiroun, the extremist group led by hate preacher Anjem Choudary, written by American counter- terrorism expert Douglas Weeks. He spent years studying the group and winning the trust of its leaders, and i nterviewed figures i ncluding Choudary and Dhar.
Dhar, who was also known as Abu Rumaysah, featured in an infamous Channel 4 documentary called Jihadis Next Door. In 2016, he was identified as the likely narrator of a video that showed the execution of five men in Syria. The masked man mocked then Prime Minister David Cameron for daring to ‘challenge the might’ of the extremist group before the victims were shot in the back of the head.
Mr Weeks says he received a message from one of the jihadi’s associates in Raqqa confirming his ‘martyrdom’. In the message, the unidentified friend said: ‘To Allah we belong and to him we shall return. Abu Rumaysah attained that which he always wanted along with his wife in the siege of Raqqa.’
Last night, Mr Weeks told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I am confident that the information is correct as I have cross-checked it.’
Dhar, who would have been 35 at the time of his death, was born a Hindu and apparently aspired to become a vet when he was a child. Instead he ended up as a bouncycastle salesman. He converted to Islam after falling under the spell of Choudary, and was subsequently arrested six times by counterterrorism police for extremism.
Mr Weeks claims about half of the estimated 800 members of Al-Muhajiroun fled to Syria after IS declared its caliphate. The vast majority of the group’s Syrian jihadis are believed to be dead.
Raffaello Pantucci, a terrorism expert at the Royal United Services Institute think-tank, said: ‘Dhar was one of the more articulate and prominent members of the group and given his prominence, he would have likely been a target.’