Speculation grows over identity of IS killer

Former associates of a London man who fled the UK to Syria believe he could be the masked man with an English accent who appears in a new murder video issued by the Islamic State (IS) group.

Speculation on Monday grew that the unidentified man was Abu Rumaysah, an East London man who fled to Syria in September 2014 with his pregnant wife and four children after being arrested in anti-terror raids.

Abu Rumaysah, whose real name is Siddhartha Dhar, later posted a photo of himself apparently taken in Syria, posing with a gun and his new-born child, with the hashtag #GenerationKhilafah.

“It sounds like him. It is as clear as day, his voice,” one former close associate told Middle East Eye. Asked whether he believed the man was Abu Rumaysah, he said: “Quite possibly. Everyone is saying it is.”

Comparisons between the voice of the masked IS gunman and Abu Rumaysah have further increased speculation:

Another person, also speaking anonymously, told MEE: “There are a lot of rumours going around. When I listened to it a couple of times it did sound like Abu Rumaysah. A lot of guys are saying it is him.”

Abu Rumaysah was a prominent media figure in the months before his disappearance to Syria, and frequently appeared on television and in the media explaining his desire to live under sharia law.

"I would love to live under the Islamic State, I'd love to live under the sharia, and I hope that one day Britain gets to live under the sharia as well," he told Channel 4 News in August 2014.

While in the UK, Abu Rumaysah was an acolyte of Anjem Choudary, a preacher facing trial on charges of encouraging support for IS, and was an organiser of the so-called “Muslim Patrol” group which earned headlines in 2013 for their controversial efforts to promote sharia law on the streets of East London.

Choudary on Monday told MEE he was not permitted to watch the IS video because of bail conditions, and said he had only seen a couple of seconds of its content on television news.

“It’s very difficult for me to assess who it is,” he said. “It could be him. I’m not ruling it out but I can’t be certain I’m afraid.”

In a now-deleted online post entitled "Jihadi John and the Right to be Violent" published in March 2015, Abu Rumaysah defended the killings of hostages by Mohammed Emwazi, an English-accented IS members, and suggested IS’s use of violence was morally superior to the US-led coalition’s bombing of IS-held territory.

“However brutal those beheadings were made to appear, for many Westerners it was never the manner of the execution that was so shocking, it was the realisation that the wrong blood was on the wrong knife, and the realisation that their team had, on this occasion, lost,” he wrote.

Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwaiti-born British citizen dubbed 'Jihadi John' by the media, was killed in a US drone strike in Raqqa, IS’s self-declared capital, in November.

'Imbecile'

In the latest IS video, which is described as "A Message to David Cameron", a man wearing military clothing and brandishing a hand gun, threatens the UK, which last month joined the US-led coalition bombing IS in Syria, and calls the British prime minister an “imbecile”.

"Only an imbecile would dare to wage war against a land where the law of Allah reigns supreme and where the people live under the justice and security of sharia," he says.

"We will continue to wage jihad ... and one day invade your land, where we will rule by the sharia."

The man and four other masked men then kill five men who are identified as spies with gunshots to the back of the head.

Raffaello Pantucci, director of International Security Studies at the Royal United Services and an expert on extremism in the UK, told MEE it was "perfectly possible" that the man in the video was Abu Rumaysah, although he said it was "quite a jump" from his past as a radical preacher on the streets of London.

"He made the decision to go to Daesh [an Arabic acronym for IS] and bring his family and was quite open about advocating for people to join and being part of the group. I think it highlights the larger point that radicals here in the UK who are quite loud and vocal can often turn out to be the real thing," said Pantucci.

UK security services say they are working to identify the man in the video as well as a young boy who appears who also speaks with an apparently English accent.

A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police told MEE: "We are assessing the content of video posted online that appear to show the murder of hostages. We are also reminding the public that the dissemination of extremist material may constitute an offence under terrorism legislation. "

A spokesperson for Downing Street condemned the video as a “propaganda tool”, while Cameron, visiting East London on Monday, described it as “desperate stuff”.