Revealed: British shop worker waging bloody jihad for Al Qaeda... with ‘Unit Bin Laden’
A YOUNG British Muslim who fled his suburban upbringing and travelled abroad to become a fanatical terrorist can today be unmasked by The Mail on Sunday.
London-born Ismail Jabbar, 22, is fighting for the ‘Unit Bin Laden’ of violent Islamic extremists in Syria, where he boasts of killing his enemies. A former trainee with the House of Fraser store, he also incites fellow Muslims to murder soldiers, police officers and unbelievers back in Britain.
He disappeared from the UK nine months ago and smuggled himself into the war-ravaged country as a Kalashnikov-wielding jihadist who revels in bloodshed and has used a series of aliases to hide his true identity.
He is the only known British extremist to give a full account of fighting in Syria.
MI5 and the police have been monitoring his movements via the series of extreme online posts he has made on websites such as Twitter, Face-
‘I want to die in Syria as a martyr’
book and Ask.fm. The Mail on Sunday has been told that this self-proclaimed terrorist and murderer will be arrested if he ever returns to the UK for inciting extremism as well as travelling abroad to commit terrorist acts.
Evidence of Jabbar’s extremism, compiled by this newspaper, includes:
Posting graphic images of ‘enemies’ he claims his group has killed, including a severed head and body parts, and one of himself apparently standing on a corpse in uniform.
Inciting fellow British Muslims to launch ‘lone-wolf’ style attacks like that on soldier Lee Rigby, who was hacked to death outside his barracks in Woolwich, South London.
Defending the two murderers of Rigby and urging followers to ‘clench a knife... and go stab a soldier’ or ‘chop couple pig heads in the streets of London’, believed to be a reference to the police.
Justifying attacks on UK civilians as well as urging bomb attacks on targets like petrol stations.
Fighting for a notorious Al Qaedalinked group called Al-Nusra Front, and encouraging friends to leave the UK and join him for jihad.
To the horror of his parents – who are begging him to return to Britain – Jabbar has said that he wants to die in Syria as a ‘shaheed’ [martyr], while attempting to create an Islamic state with strict sharia law.
A family source said: ‘It’s been very stressful. No father or mother should have to go through this. I pray for every mother and father who have lost their son like us. I pray for them to come back.’
After telling friends he was travelling to Syria as part of an aid convoy, Jabbar trained with terrorists and has now formed his own group, the Unit Bin Laden, amid the chaos of a bloody civil war that has already cost more than 150,000 lives.
Jabbar’s case has come to light as David Cameron prepares to tighten the law so that more British jihadis will face prosecution for committing terrorist acts overseas.
The law change – to be announced in the Queen’s Speech this week – is in response to fears Britons becoming radicalised in countries such as Syria present the greatest threat hreat to Britain’s national security.
Highlighting the scale of the threat, just yesterday, two young men suspected of trying to aid Syrian rebels were arrested in separate incidents at Heathrow.
A 19-year-old was held by y counter-terrorism officers at t the airport on suspicion of f preparing for acts of terrorrism while a 20-year-old was s seized over allegations of sending money overseas for or the purposes of assisting terrorism in Syria.
Lord Carlile, the Govern-ment’s former adviser on counter-terrosim said last night: t: ‘I am extremely worried about out Britons in Syria, as they pose se a significant national security rity threat. The Government should ould do more to counter this.’
Just a year ago, Jabbar from Hayes, Middlesex, was a trainee at a local branch of House of Fraser, having finished his studies at Uxbridge College.
The eldest son of Atik Jabbar, 45, an IT professional, and housewife Shakila Jabbar, 45, he had previously attended Harlington Community School, a mixed state comprehensive, where he was described as a ‘quiet boy’ who stayed away from
drugs and alcohlhol and dh had d never b been i in seriious trouble.
A video he posted on YouTube in 2006 when he was just 15 shows him as a typical urban teenager, wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap and striking a hip-hop pose popularised by the spoof TV character Ali G.
A supporter of Liverpool FC and the Pakistani cricket team, he later studied at Uxbridge College and until last summer was posting regular updates on Facebook about writ- ing assignments and taking BTEC courses, as well as playing computer games with friends and watching TV series such as Game of Thrones.
But from the age of 20 he is understood to have started taking an interest in radical Islam, listening to online speeches of hate preacher Anwar Al-Awlaki.
Between composing rap lyrics and posting photographs of takeaway meals on his Facebook account, Jabbar began to write more about Islam and the struggles of Muslims overseas, and appears to have quietly hatched a plot to become a jihadi fighter abroad.
Mr Jabbar Snr, a respected and moderate Muslim, is understood to have had no idea his son had travelled to Syria. Last summer, Ismail reportedly asked his father for his passport to enrol on a university course. Then, in the middle of August, he suddenly disappeared from the family’s suburban home. It was eight weeks before the family discovered that he was in Syria after he updated his Facebook status, as well as tweeting from a Twitter account set up under his jihadi alias, Abu Maryam Muhajir.
Mrs Jabbar apparently became so distressed at the news that she was taken to hospital.
Relatives have said that she has since lost weight, and flew to Pakistan two weeks ago to be consoled by relatives there. Her husband and his 70-year-old father, Abdul, then visited Turkey last September to look for Ismail, but local police said they could not help.
A family source told The Mail on Sunday: ‘We are praying every day that he will come back and come to his senses. He is a good kid and I don’t understand why he is mixed up in this.
‘We speak to him now and again on the phone – it is always on his terms. We are just a normal British family. This is all stupid, this is not our religion.’
Last night Ismail Jabbar’s maternal aunt, Saira Shaikh, 51, said: ‘I saw Ismail about a month before he left, during Ramadan. He came to the house and had grown his beard down to his chest. He looked so different, his hair was long and he had a strange look in his eyes.
‘It was as if he had been brainwashed, he was very quiet. I rang Shakila and said to her: “Look after your son.” I had something in my mind, I wanted to warn her. A month later he was gone. His mother is very upset, Ismail is her only son. It’s very shameful.’
Last October he revealed that he was in the war zone, writing online:
‘You see those people on the news, the TV, the ones everybody hate yh [yeah] that’s me.’ He is now understood to be living in a house with about a dozen militants from his group in Aleppo. His Unit Bin Laden is one of many hardline jihadi groups that want to turn the country into a sharia state. They are involved in a three-way civil war against President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and the secular Free Syrian Army.
Jabbar tweets prolifically as well as answering questions left anonymously on Ask.fm. Asked why he had travelled to Syria to fight, he replied: ‘I was just sick of life in land of kuffar [unbeliever] I knew jihad [holy war] was fard [a duty] and I knew it was the truth when I was young I listened to alot of awlaki [hate preacher] I was just not practicing and I was depressed I saw my sisters and brothers being oppressed so I left for shaam [Syria].’ Jabbar’s frequent messages reveal his delight at the bloodshed. One photograph, since deleted, shows three dead soldiers lying on a bloodied courtyard while two other men with heavy weapons stand over them. Jabbar wrote: ‘This was so peak for dem,’ suggesting his comrades were pleased. Another picture showed a uniformed figure standing over one of the corpses. Jabbar showed it to an Assad supporter with the gloating caption: ‘Under my foot you dirty kuff [kuffar, or non-Muslim].’ He describes having to buy ‘war gear’ like guns and bullets, and advises anyone following him from Britain to bring sturdy shoes.
Jabbar also appears to miss the comforts of home, recently tweet- ing a photograph of Honey Nut Cornflakes. ‘I miss the english products and foods and I miss my mum the most,’ he wrote.
But Jabbar has also spoken of his hatred towards non-Muslims in his homeland. During the recent furore over takeaway restaurants serving halal meat, he wrote: ‘Someone needs to just grab a knife and do some damage outside subway just inspiring the believers.’
When a commenter expressed anger at having to remain in the West, Jabbar replied in distinctive text-style: ‘Clinch a knife bro and go stab a soldier its so much easy to kill an enemy of allah there then here coz here they fore back.’ Around 20 Britons have been killed in action in Syria. British Muslims are now thought to make up the largest foreign contingent in the bloodthirsty Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group.
These British jihadis, many of whom use social media to promote or glorify terrorism, are being closely monitored by Britain’s counter-terrorism agencies.
A counter-terror Twitter account run by the US State Department has even sent messages to Jabbar warning him of the risks of fighting for Al Qaeda. While Britons fighting in Syria have been identified before, their names and details often emerged after they had died fighting, like that of Abdullah Deghayes, 18, from Brighton, who was killed in April. Last month Mashudur Choudhury, a father of two from Portsmouth became the first Briton to be convicted of trying to reach a terrorist training camp in Syria.
Senior figures in Jabbar’s former mosque warned that at least three other local boys had travelled to Syria with him. A trustee of the
‘Three other boys have gone with him’
Hayes Muslim Centre said: ‘I remember him. He used to pray here, and we know that he has gone to Syria. There are three other boys who have gone like that.’
He added that Jabbar has since encouraged two other friends from Hayes to leave for Syria. Scotland Yard said it was aware of the case, and is investigating.
A spokesman added: ‘Travelling abroad for the purpose of engaging in terrorist related activity is an offence.
‘Anyone in the UK, or returning to the UK, who has been engaged in this type of activity will be prosecuted where appropriate.’
The Mail on Sunday contacted Twitter on Friday about Jabbar’s posts, which contravene its policy on offensive material. A spokesman declined to comment and his account was still active last night. Additional reporting: Martin Beckford, Michael Powell
and Robert Verkaik