Islamic State ‘executioner’ Sidhartha Dhar reported dead in Iraq
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Islamic State ‘executioner’ Sidhartha Dhar reported dead in Iraq

Sidhartha Dhar, a British citizen of Indian origin, was nicknamed 'Jihadi Sid' after 'Jihadi John', another British citizen who was known for his extreme cruelty.

   
Image of Sidhartha Dhar | Twitter

Image of Sidhartha Dhar | Twitter

Sidhartha Dhar, a British citizen of Indian origin, was nicknamed ‘Jihadi Sid’ after ‘Jihadi John’, another British citizen who was known for his extreme cruelty.

New Delhi: Sidhartha Dhar’s family remembered him as a shy, sensitive young British man not unusual from other boys of his age, reported the Daily Mail in 2016. That’s before he fell in love with a woman, Aisha Tariq, converted to Islam at 19 and married her four years later.

Last week, British counter-terrorism expert Charles Lister tweeted that Dhar or Al-Rumaysah, the name he took when he joined the now-banned terror group Al-Muhajiroun and subsequently fled to Syria in 2014, had died.

The intervening years is the story of a young British man of Indian origin who became an internationally wanted terrorist. Dhar, once the spokesperson of Al-Muhajiroun, which drew its inspiration from the Salafi-Wahabi sect of Islam, was arrested at least six times in the UK for his association with the group.


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He is said to have been an executioner for the Islamic State, which had taken over large parts of Iraq. A 2016 video, which documented the killings of those who had betrayed the Islamic State, portrayed Dhar as a key executioner.

Like ‘Jihadi John’, the white British citizen who left the UK to join IS and was noted for his extreme, unflinching cruelty, Dhar was believed to have been nicknamed ‘Jihadi Sid’.

Another terrorism expert, Amarnath Amarasingam, however, believes 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”.

Close aide of Anjem Choudary

Lister’s tweet reporting Dhar’s death last week coincided with the release of the London-based radical Islamic preacher Anjem Choudary, to whom Dhar was said to have been a very close aide. Choudary is believed to be a British citizen of Pakistani origin.

It was Choudary who co-founded the Al-Muhajiroun group along with another radical preacher Omar Bakhri Muhammed. Dhar not only became a spokesperson for Al-Muhajiroun but was also an influential figure in radical circles.

In an interview with Al Jazeera in 2014, Dhar had said, “The West needs to tread their steps very carefully. They are not facing an organisation like al Qaeda, they are facing a government that for all intents and purposes is bigger than France, and bigger than the UK.”

There has been little news of Dhar since he left the UK for Syria. Shortly after his arrival, he wrote a book, A Brief Guide to the Islamic State, described in the western media as pure propaganda.

“If you thought London or New York was cosmopolitan then wait until you step foot in the Islamic State because it screams diversity,” he had written.

In January 2018, the US named Dhar as a specially designated global terrorist, making him a wanted man outside the UK.

A ‘worrying’ release

Lister, a senior fellow and director of the Extremism and Counterterrorism Programme at the Middle East Institute, said the timing of Choudary’s release and news of Dhar’s alleged death was “intriguing”.

“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,” Lister wrote in another tweet.

Choudary, considered to be one of the world’s most influential radical preachers, was arrested in 2014 and convicted two years later for seeking support for the Islamic State. He was granted parole on 19 October of this year, on grounds of good behaviour.


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His release has deepened anxieties in the UK, even though he will be strictly monitored.

“As soon as this license finishes and these extreme conditions drop off, he is going to be back on television preaching and winding people back,” the New York Times quotes former counter-terrorism detective David Videcette as saying. “And he’s going to make sure that it’s 10 times harder to convict him.”