Jihadi Junior ‘son of Muslim convert mum from Britain’
THE English- speaking child who appears in the sickening new Islamic State execution video is the son of a notorious jihadi bride who fled with him to Syria three years ago.
The identity of the ‘Jihadi Junior’, who is just four and a half, was revealed by his shocked grandfather.
The child soldier is Isa Dare, whose Muslim convert mother Grace ‘ Khadija’ Dare, 24, from Lewisham, South-East London, had links to the killers of Lee Rigby.
In the video Isa, wearing military fatigues and a black headscarf with an Islamic State logo on it, vows: ‘We are going to kill the kaffir (non-believers) over there’ as he points to the distance.
Last July Dare – a devout Christian as a child – posted a picture on social media of Isa, whose name is an Arabic form of Jesus, aiming an AK-47 assault rifle that he seemed only just big enough to lift.
Yesterday Prime Minister David Cameron described the film featuring Isa and a masked extremist, who has a British accent, as ‘desperate stuff ’ from a group that is ‘losing territory’ and ‘increasingly losing anybody’s sympathy’.
Last night Isa’s grandfather Henry Dare, 59, also known as Sunday, spoke of his disgust at Islamic State’s latest publicity stunt.
But he said of Isa: ‘ He’s my grandson. I can’t disown him.’ He urged his daughter to return to Britain to ‘face the music’.
He told Channel 4 she had called him from Syria ‘weeks ago’, having ‘brought shame’ on the family.
His daughter had told him she was going to Egypt to study and when he found out she was in Syria, ‘I dropped the phone on her because I was annoyed’.
Asked if he thought his grandson had any idea what he was saying in the video, Mr Dare – of Deptford, South-East London – said: ‘ No – he’s a kid. He’s a minor, he’s under five. He’s acting under the influence of IS guerrillas. He’s too young.’
Mr Dare added: ‘He’s propaganda. They [IS] are just using a small boy. They are using him as a shield.’
Mr Dare said he had reported Grace to the police on three occasions before she left for Syria and told them ‘she’s behaving in a very f unny way’. He added: ‘They told me “she’s free”. They said she’s above 18.’
Talking about his feelings for his daughter and her family, he said: ‘I don’t want to have any contact with them. They’ve let me down. I’m totally disappointed. She was a Christian, she was brought up in a Christian way – all of a sudden she decided to become a Muslim.’
He said he last saw his grandson two or three years ago, ‘before they went to Syria’.
Of the discovery that he was in the new Islamic State video, he told the Mail: ‘I was very surprised.’
He then criticised the authorities over their lack of action to bring his grandchildren back to safety, saying: ‘The police are of no help – they’re doing nothing.’
The video, which shows five men accused of being UK spies being murdered, is being examined by the British security services who are thought to be confident they have already identified both the boy and the masked fanatic who fronted it.
The majority of the footage, which has yet to be independently verified, features the balaclava-wearing man who labels Mr Cameron ‘an imbecile’ for launching air strikes in Syria, before killing a prisoner. Four other men then kill a prisoner each.
He speaks in a British accent and appears to mimic the style of the Briton known as Jihadi John – real name Mohammed Emwazi – who was killed in a US drone strike in Syria in November.
Yesterday there were unconfirmed reports that the ‘new Jihadi John’ could be British Muslim convert Siddhartha Dhar – a former Hindu from North London who became radicalised and changed his name to Abu Rumaysah. A number of experts disputed this identity.
Grace Dare is believed to have been radicalised online, then began attending the Lewisham Islamic Centre, where Fusilier Rigby’s murderers Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale are reported to have worshipped. The mosque has denied they were part of the congregation. Her mother Victoria said she changed her first name to Khadija after she began attending the mosque.
‘I still call her our Grace,’ said the mother. ‘I want her back in my life. She is the only child that I have and the devil took her away.’
Dare, born in London in 1991 of Nigerian descent, went to Syria in around 2012 and married a Swede known as Abu Bakr. He is now dead.
She used social media to gloat
Indoctrinated: A picture posted last about the beheading of American journalist James Foley and said she wanted to be the first British woman to kill an IS hostage. Her mother, also from Lewisham, said of her daughter in a BBC TV documentary l ast April: ‘ She l oved church. She had a Bible, she read the Bible. She would sit and pray and pray and pray.’
Downing Street said the release of the video on Sunday showed the ter-
‘The devil took my
only child away’
rorist group was ‘under pressure’. The footage shows five men in orange jumpsuits ‘confessing’ to taking money in return for filming and photographing sites within Raqqa, the capital of IS’s self-declared caliphate.
A member of a Raqqa-based group which opposes IS told the Radio 4 Today programme that the victims included shopkeepers and businessmen from the town.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said of the video that ‘it reflects the barbarity of this organisation but it is also a propaganda tool. This is a terrorist group we are seeing put under pressure.’ More than 30 UK children have already been made the subject of family court orders over radicalisation fears, Scotland Yard has revealed.
Judges have considered cases involving 12 different families. Last year Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, the country’s most senior terrorism officer, said some children were ‘almost babes in arms’, with ages ranging from two or three up to 16 or 17.