Thursday, 7 August 2014

The curly-haired, bearded hipster from a wealthy family who has become a sword-wielding ISIS poster boy

Isis terrorists have a new poster boy – a bearded Egyptian known as the ‘hipster jihadi’ who sports trendy curly hair and black-rimmed glasses.
He’s been pictured on the back of a horse carrying a machine gun and waving a scimitar in the air – and standing in front of a dusty car holding the same weapon.
On Twitter he’s posted gruesome pictures of decapitated heads in a basket and rants glorifying Isis and its murderous leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

'Hipster jihadi': Islam Yaken has become the new poster boy of terror group Isis
'Hipster jihadi': Islam Yaken has become the new poster boy of terror group Isis
Fanatic: This picture of Yaken brandishing a scimitar on horseback appeared on Twitter
Fanatic: This picture of Yaken brandishing a scimitar on horseback appeared on Twitter
But a photograph of him showing off his six-pack suggests that he had a very different lifestyle until recently.
He’s been identified as Islam Yaken, an Egyptian university law graduate brought up in a wealthy family in Cairo, according to the Telegraph.
 

Yaken was educated at the well-regarded French Lycée in Heliopolis, a well-to-do area of Cairo, and at the distinguished Ain Shams University.
He can speak English and French and used to seem more concerned with burning calories in the gym than a holy war, according to his social media postings.
He was known as a ‘funny but respectful’ person - and supported the former president of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Morsi - but now his former school-friends are understandably concerned.
Showing off: This picture of Yaken appears to demonstrate that he used to have very different priorities
Showing off: This picture of Yaken appears to demonstrate that he used to have very different priorities
 

Aliya Mikkawi wrote on Twitter: ‘Islam Yaken's story is freaking scary. He used to be at school with me.’
Yaken is reportedly living in an apartment belonging to someone else in the Syrian city of Raqqa, an Isis stronghold, and wants his family to join them.
He apparently told his mother not to worry about the owners returning because they are ‘dead and gone’.
Some Twitter users find his story so remarkable that they’re questioning its authenticity.
One wrote: ‘Are we sure this is not a hoax? That someone isn’t pulling our leg here?’
Extremists: Fighters from Isis marching in Raqqa, Syria, where Yaken is now holed up
Extremists: Fighters from Isis marching in Raqqa, Syria, where Yaken is now holed up
Iraqi militants from Isis overran a cluster of predominantly Christian villages alongside the country's semi-autonomous Kurdish region today, sending tens of thousands of civilians and Kurdish fighters fleeing from the area, several priests in northern Iraq said.
The capture of Qaraqoush, Iraq's biggest Christian village, and at least four other nearby hamlets, brings the Islamic State to the very edge of the Iraqi Kurdish territory and its regional capital, Irbil.
The Islamic State has already seized large chunks of northern and western Iraq in a blitz offensive in June, including Iraq's second-largest city of Mosul. The onslaught has pushed Iraq into its worst crisis since the 2011 withdrawal of U.S. troops. 

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