Four British terrorists all used same Samsung phone to take videos and photos of their time fighting for ISIS
Footage and photos from a mobile phone used by four British jihadis as they documented their life in the IS caliphate before their deaths has been handed to British media by Syrian authorities.
The Samsung Galaxy smartphone was passed from one owner to another between 2013 to 2015 as the British Jihadis, from West London and Portsmouth, made their way to Raqqa, Syria, reports The Times.
Home videos filmed by the four men including British Choukri Ellekhlifi, 22, Fatlum Shalaku, 20, and Muhammad Mehdi Hassan, 19, – all now deceased – revealed an extraordinary insight into their lives in the caliphate.
At first the videos appear to show a group of men enjoying their adventure as they travel from the Turkish border into the western Aleppo countryside, to al-Bab, then to Raqqa in 2013, the former ‘capital’ of IS.
Spending time on a roof top swimming pool in the western Aleppo countryside bordering Turkey the men appear to enjoy a stag-do like atmosphere – the sort of behaviour you might expect from young Londoners, bar the AK-47 lying by the pool – reports The Times.
The men, including Ellekhlifi who owned the phone at the time, film each other dive-bombing into an abandoned swimming pool in a luxury property before narrating their own Sir David Attenborough-style documentary on the Syrian wildlife they encountered – a vulture.
In the video Ellekhlifi gets ready to do a flip into the pool, putting down his assault rifle and shouting to the person filming: ‘You got me? A mujahideen!’ to which the camera man replies ‘I got you, man’, reports The Times.
Later videos from February 2015, filmed by another Londoner, feature the mood becoming darker and the men becoming aggressive as they take part in target practice having met three other jihadists including an Australian and a Swede.
Lining up the men take shots at an abandoned building.
With one shouting: ‘Let’s kill some kuffar [Arabic for ‘nonbelievers’]’
A Londoner appearing to be of of east African origin holds a pistol shouts: ‘We are going to wed our bullets with the Americans and the British, inshallah.’
The frenzied man then shoots a whole round of ammunition from the handgun into the air above their heads.
He shouts: ‘These bullets will be wedded with your bodies, Americans, British, French … we are here. Allah will give us victory’, reports The Times.
The phone is thought to have been used by four British jihadists who were warned by Isis handlers to use a Samsung rather than an Apple iPhone to avoid government tracking, reports The Times.
Choukri Ellekhlifi, was the first to use the phone in 2013 after leaving his home near the A40 flyover in West London to join 14 other men, known as the ‘Westway warriors’, who had left for Syria from that area.
Ellekhlifi attended the same school as Mohammed Emwazi, better known as Jihadi John, a ‘Westway warrior’ and leader of the so called ‘Beatles’ – a group that became notorious for their kidnap-and-kill crimes.
Ellekhlifi was killed fighting alongside Al Qaeda-linked extremists in Syria in 2013.
It is believed the 22-year-old funded his trip by mugging people in an affluent area of London, threatening victims with a Taser-style high-voltage stun gun before forcing them to hand over valuables including designer watches and mobile phones.
He lived in London until 2012 when he skipped bail and travelled to Syria to join a group of Islamic extremists waging war on President Assad’s regime.
Ellekhlifi’s first few month in Syria during the Summer and Spring of 2013 is captured on the phone.
Another user of the phone was Fatlum Shalaku, 20, from Ladbroke grove, who blew himself up in ISIS’s successful assault on Ramadi, Iraq, in 2015.
Tech geek Muhammad Mehdi Hassan, 20, a former private school pupil from Portsmouth is also believed to have used the phone, using his tech knowledge to offer online tips to new recruits planning to join jihad in Syria.
Hassan left Britain for Syria age 19 despite an offer at Surrey University to study international politics.
He was nicknamed ‘Coco Pops jihadist’ by The Sunday Times after his mother said he liked the cereal.
Hassan, who used the alias Abu Dujana, died while fighting for Isis in 2014. He tried to escape Syria but was captured only minutes away from meeting his mother across the Turkish border.
The family confirmed Hassan had died in the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani after a picture of his body emerged on Twitter.
The contents of the phone was downloaded onto a hard drive before it was discovered by local forces in eastern Syria and given to The Sunday Times.
It is not known who the final owner of the phone was, (the man of east African origin who was filmed shooting a rifle), or whether they are still alive, however The Sunday Times was able to establish that the three other jihadis to have shared the phone are now dead.
Source: Daily Mail
