Scots jihadist told to ‘come home’
Mosque urges impressionable recruit to reject a life of terror
A SCOTS jihadist who has joined the brutal terror group ISIS was urged last night by his mosque in Aberdeen to ‘come back to your family’.
Abdul Rakib Amin, 26, is the third Briton seen in a chilling recruitment video for ISIS, an extremist group which beheads, tortures and executes ‘unbelievers’.
He was filmed alongside fellow British extremists Reyaad Khan and Nasser Muthana, both 20, urging other Muslims to fight for ISIS in the Middle East.
Wearing wrap-around sunglasses and a white scarf around his head, Amin describes jihad as ‘the cure for depression’.
Now leaders at the Aberdeen Mosque and Islamic Centre, where the terrorist was once a prayer-caller, have spoken of their shock.
Imam Ibrahim Alwawi said Amin, a devout follower of Islam, was not radicalised in Aberdeen and there was ‘no indication’ of the path he would take.
Appealing directly to the jihadist, he said: ‘I would say to him to come back to your family. We would welcome him back to the mosque. But not to come with his views and ideology and what he is doing.’
A school friend of Amin, known as Raqib, said he turned from a carefree teenager into a strict Muslim without warning. Naz Hussain said: ‘He went away with his family to Bangladesh and when he came back he was a different person. He had a beard, he wore robes and looked like how he does in the video.
‘It was quite shocking, before he had always worn jeans. He was popular and outgoing, just a normal lad. It is just crazy that a guy from Aberdeen could go on to do something like this.’
Amin is likely to face police questioning – and a possible criminal charge under the Terrorism Act 2006 – upon his eventual return to Scotland. Last night, his family were said by friends to be ‘in hiding’ after the video came to light.
Pictures of Amin during his school days at St Machar Academy show no sign of the radical path he would take. It was after leaving school, when his family returned to their home country of Bangladesh to care for his sick grandmother, that his views became more militant.
On returning to Aberdeen after four years abroad, the young man whose father had previously nagged him to go to mosque started to go almost every day.
He grew a beard, wore the traditional shalwar-kameez – a tunic and loose trousers – and read the Koran. He became an informal organiser at the mosque, calling prayers which take place five times a day.
He did not go to college and he worked in the kebab and pizza takeaway owned by his father, named locally as Abdul Rouf. Then, almost two years ago, the family moved to Leicester to start up a new catering business, with friends hearing nothing from Amin until he appeared posing with a gun in the recruitment video.
A childhood friend, who did not want to be named, said he believed Amin had been ‘brainwashed’. He
‘I’d tell him not to throw his life away’
said: ‘He was always really impressionable but just fell in with the wrong crowd. He has met someone who has taken advantage of him.’
Amin’s mosque, which meets almost every week with police to combat extremism, has moved to distance itself from the jihadist. Amid fears of a backlash, elders held a meeting warning worshippers to be careful of revenge attacks.
David Abdul Rahman Harrell, spokesman f or the mosque in Spital, Aberdeen, said yesterday: ‘Aberdeen Mosque and Islamic centre gives unequivocal, unequivocal condemnation of all these activities based on religious values and our identity as Scottish and British Muslims.
‘No political or religious cause could ever be assisted by such acts of terrorism. These activities are against both divine and human laws and we condemn them i n the strongest terms.’
Amin’s brother, who has been left partially disabled by a car accident, is believed to still live in Aberdeen but could not be reached for comment last night. His sister and parents live in Leicester but have also made no comment about the video. A family friend, Maqbool Chaudry, said: ‘Rakib was like my son and I cannot believe he has done this. I think he has just been i nfluenced and has got confused.’
Although Amin did not have a girlfriend, family friends understood he was considering an arranged marriage and his parents were searching for a suitable wife.
Mr Chaudry said: ‘He stopped drinking and he was calmer when he started going to the mosque. In the past he had a short fuse and he would get in schoolboy fights.
‘He was much more humble later and he would come in and talk for hours about how he wanted to get away from the bad things and live a good life. If I could speak to him now, I would tell him not to throw his life away like this.’