INVESTIGATION
HER poisonous outpourings on the internet glorify the murderous acts of Islamic State terrorists and are meant to lure young British Muslim women to travel to Syria as ‘Jihadi brides’. And today The Mail on Sunday can unmask the evil ‘matchmaker’ known by the pseudonym Umm Muthanna Al Britaniyah.
She is a former London student whose real name is Tooba Gondal. She is 22 years old and her father is a successful businessman.
Her transformation, in a few years, from happy schoolgirl about to leave for college to IS cheerleader in a burka toting an AK-47 is stark. These days, instead of furthering her education, her most cherished desire is to become a ‘martyr’ in a suicide bombing.
Through her prolific output on social media, she commands a powerful influence on her following of largely young girls as she ‘grooms’ them, urging them, as she has done, to travel to Syria and marry bloodthirsty IS killers. In her online rants, she described Britain as ‘a filthy country’ and praised the Paris massacre last November, which left more than 130 dead, saying: ‘EXPLOSIONS AND SHOOTINGS… 80 dead. And all praise is due to Allah Almighty. #Paris Under Attack.’
She added: ‘Wish I could have seen the hostages being slaughtered last night with my own eyes. Would have been just beautiful.’
In May last year, using the name Fatima, she encouraged a British teenager she met on social media to travel to Syria and join IS. She then asked the teenage recruit to meet one of her own relatives – a 16-yearold girl – and bring her to Syria too. The plan was to fly to Switzerland then Istanbul, and then travel by land to the Syrian border.
But it all fell apart because the teenager that Gondal thought she was grooming was actually an undercover reporter. The newspaper alerted police, who arrested Gondal’s relative at home. She has since been dealt with by offi- cers from Prevent, Scotland Yard’s deradicalisation unit.
Exactly how Gondal, from Walthamstow, East London, ended up promoting the barbarity of IS killers from their stronghold in Raqqa, Syria, is not clear, but this is not a story of a disenfranchised, no-hoper youth looking for a way out of desperate circumstances. She is the eldest daughter of a successful London businessman and was, according to friends, in the top set for all subjects at her local secondary, Kelmscott School – though also something of a rebel.
A photograph of Gondal in her finalyear yearbook in 2010 shows her wearing the hijab, or Islamic headscarf, to school. But classmates recalled how she would remove her hijab on the way to school, to allow her long brown hair to hang free, then put it back on the way home.
One ex-classmate said: ‘She was a rebel. She did come to school with the headscarf, but she would then take it off. She also liked sneaking out of her house.’
The friend, who did not want to be identified, said Gondal even smoked at school and had secret boyfriends. She adored boy bands and their music – a far cry from the jihadi songs she would come to love.
The friend said she stayed in contact with Gondal by social media during their college years, but noticed a change about two years ago. ‘She started posting verses of the Koran on Twitter, and talking about religion. I just don’t know what brought it on,’ she said.
None of the former friends we spoke to had any clue as to why Gondal would go to Syria.
AT SOME point in the five years since the photograph on the far right was taken – on a school mock interview day – Gondal went from being a typical feisty teenage girl with everything to live for to one who yearns for death, presumably taking as many victims as possible with her.
Last summer, soon after telling her Twitter followers that she had acquired a suicide-bomber’s vest, she tweeted: ‘I came here to die. I will not leave till I get what I came here for: shahadah [martyrdom].’
Her chilling radicalisation almost certainly took place largely online and, as she carries out IS’s bidding on social network sites, that is where Gondal, under her nom de guerre, hunts for new recruits.
Her tweets and photographs glamorise jihad in Syria, and encourage others to leave Britain and head for the self-declared caliphate. She is one of about 60 British women and girls who have fled to Syria to join IS.
After school, Gondal attended Hackney’s BSix sixth-form college, then won a place at the prestigious Goldsmiths College, part of the University of London, studying English.
An analysis of Gondal’s social media accounts and a blog reveals that in about November 2012 – apparently while she was a student at Goldsmiths College – she says she ‘reverted’ back to Islam.
There is some evidence that she may have been involved with Goldsmiths’ Islamic Society – known as ISOC – which has a reputation as a radical hotbed.
She tweeted in November 2014 about ISOC’s part in a college charity fund-raising effort, and described it as ‘My Uni!’
Last year, security guards had to intervene when members of Goldsmiths’ ISOC disrupted a lecture by outspoken Iranian human rights campaigner Maryam Namazie about blasphemy. ‘Brothers’ of the Islamic Society started coming in and out of the auditorium, talking over her and repeatedly banging a door. One turned off the projector that she was using.
When The Mail on Sunday asked the student group about Gondal, a spokesman denied any knowledge of her, saying: ‘I have never heard the name, nor have any idea who this individual may be.’
Gondal has been living in Raqqa since arriving in the war-torn country in January 2015.
The Mail on Sunday has been tracking her on social media for more than 18 months, as she became one
‘Hey UK security, I left your filthy country’
of the most visible British female ‘ambassadors’ for the terror group, frequently posting messages and pictures from Syria.
She began tweeting using the handle @Umm_muthanna, which literally means Mother of Muthanna.
Although she did not reveal her real identity on Twitter, throughout last year Gondal inadvertently left clues about herself, telling her thousands of followers – including many young