ISIL’s German rapper killed
For years, the hands of the militant who called himself Abu Talha Al-Almani still bore the black ink reminders of his former life. “STR8,” read one tattoo. “Thug,” read the other.
“This is from the days when I lived the life of an unbeliever,” Denis Cuspert, a German rapper who became an ISIL recruiter, told the New York Times in 2011. “Allah will erase them from me one day.”
Cuspert was killed this month in a U.S. airstrike in Syria, CNN and other outlets reported Thursday. At the time of his death, he was a German-language recruiter for ISIL and “a willing pitchman for (Islamic State) atrocities,” according to a State Department release designating him a terrorist.
“Cuspert is emblematic of the type of foreign recruit ISIL seeks for its ranks — individuals who have engaged in criminal activity in their home countries who then travel to Iraq and Syria to commit far worse crimes against the people of those countries,” the State Department release said.
He often appeared in, and sometimes sang for, the group’s slickly produced videos. In one, he splashes water at some unidentified stream, smiling like a man on a camping trip. In another, he clutches a severed head.
The evolution of Deso Dogg, the hip-hop star with a chip on his shoulder, into Abu Talha Al-Almani, a militant with blood on his hands and an airstrike’s terrorist target is less unlikely than it sounds. Like so many of ISIL’s western recruits, Cuspert was simultaneously disaffected and indignant, the survivor of a troubled upbringing and a tumultuous adulthood who saw something in jihad — faith, fulfilment, the promise of redemption — he lacked at home.
“Brothers,” he said in the 2013 video by the stream, in which he splashed and smiled, “I call you to jihad! This is where you will find freedom!” Gunfire popped in the background, and he laughed. “You can really live here. It’s fun here. Jihad is a lot of fun!”
Like so many of ISIL’s other online pitchmen, Cuspert’s background — as a musician and as a Westerner — was part of his appeal for the group.