Islamic State executioner, Siddhartha Dhar, nicknamed ‘Jihadi Sid’, is believed to have been killed after British counter-terrorism expert Charles Lister tweeted that Dhar or Al-Rumaysah, the name Dhar adopted when he joined the now-banned terror group Al-Muhajiroun and subsequently fled to Syria in 2014, had died.
The death of Siddhartha Dhar would be a significant story for the UK – he’d been a close aide to al-Muhajiroun leader Anjem Choudary.
He fled the UK while on bail, amid an investigation into his public support of #ISIS.
He was later designated as a global terrorist by the U.S. pic.twitter.com/cBm7UvCc9T
— Charles Lister (@Charles_Lister) October 19, 2018
Another terrorism expert, Amarnath Amarasingam, on the contrary, said that Dhar may have actually been killed in 2017, based on information from a militant named Abu Turab.
“Asked about Abu Rumaysah (Siddhartha Dhar), Turab suggested that Rumaysah was indeed the new Jihadi John as people suspected, and was killed sometime between June and October 2017 in the Raqqa siege,” Amarasingham tweeted. “Turab said he died along with “his wife and kids”.
4. Asked about Abu Rumaysah (Siddhartha Dhar), Turab suggested that Rumaysah was indeed the new “Jihadi John” as people suspected, and was killed some time between June and October 2017 in the Raqqa siege. Turab said he died along with “his wife and kids”.
— Amarnath Amarasingam (@AmarAmarasingam) October 17, 2018
Dhar, a Kashmiri Pandit, was originally born in London. He converted to Islam later in his teens and joined Al Mohajiroun. He later adopted the name, Abu Rumaysah. He was arrested along with his aide, Anjem Choudhary on terror charges, but skipped bail.
He later fled with his pregnant wife and four children to Paris in 2014, where they travelled by coach to avoid detection, managing to reach Syria. Once in Syria, photos were taken of him cradling his newborn son while holding an assault rifle.
In 2016, a ten-minute video of Dhar leading an execution of five men emerged , in which he accused them of being British spies.
In the video, he was seen threatening then-Prime Minister David Cameron and calling him an ‘imbecile’ before shooting a prisoner in the back of the head.
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