Portsmouth public school jihadi killed in Syria

A fourth Portsmouth jihadi who travelled to Syria to fight with Islamic State has been killed

A former public schoolboy who travelled to Syria with four other friends from Portsmouth to fight with the extremist Islamic state group has been killed, it emerged yesterday.

Muhammad Mahdi Hassan, 20, was believed to have been fighting in the battle for Kobane, the Syrian Kurdish town besieged by Isil, when he died.

Hassan, a former pupil at St John’s College in Southsea, who went by the 'battle name’ Abu Dujana, had travelled to Syria with his four friends on October 8 last year. There they met another member of their group who was already fighting with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis) and is now understood to be in hospital.

A photo of Hassan’s body emerged on Twitter on Friday and his family confirmed to their local mosque they had received news of his death. In a statement the family said: “Mehdi was a loving boy with a good heart wishing to help Syrians. In recent months he had expressed the intention to return home but was worried about the repercussions. This is a tragedy and a lesson.”

Hassan had been planning to study international politics at Surrey University in September last year but before the start of the course decided to travel to Syria to fight. Referring the US air strikes bombarding Isil positions he wrote on Twitter a few days before his death: “Between 20-40 us strikes daily in ayn al arab. Alhamdulillah they are spending $10’s of billions ... against themselves.”

Abdul Jami, chairman of Portsmouth’s Jami mosque, said Hassan’s family were shocked, but not surprised at the news.

He said: “We condemn the actions of these young men. Everyday we are giving speeches against this behaviour and telling them not to go. They have been brainwashed and they have been influenced by someone. We are working hard with the crime prevention team and Portsmouth City Council.”

The death of Hassan brings to an ignominious end attempts by the self-styled Portsmouth jihadis to wage war in Syria, with four of the five men now dead and another serving a prison sentence in Britain for terrorist offences.

^{Muhammad Mahdi Hassan}

Hassan’s friend Mamunur Mohammed Roshid, 24, – nicknamed Sleepyhead – is thought to have been killed a few days before him last week, during the same siege.

Muhammad Hamidur Rahman, 25, a former Primark worker, also from Portsmouth was killed in July during a firefight with troops loyal to the Assad regime.

A fourth Portsmouth man, Ifthekar Jaman, 23, died in Syria in December last year, while taking part in an Isil assault on a major arms depot. He had previously worked in customer services for Sky.

The fifth Portsmouth-jihadi, Mashudur Rahman Choudhury, 31, was jailed on terrorism charges in May, after returning to Britain from Syria in October last year.

One expert on jihadi groups said he believed it was “highly likely” Hassan’s death had come in the fight for Kobane, where Kurds are fighting a rearguard action against Isis.

Shiraz Maher, from the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) at King’s College London, said: “British fighters in Syria are dying at a rate of knots, especially following the start of US air strikes. Of course they don’t regard it as a failure. They regard it as martyrdom and it’s what they say they want.”

Around 25 Britons are now thought to have been killed in Syria and Iraq during the widening conflict between Isis, sometimes knows as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), the country’s regimes and rival armed groups.

According to ICSR more than one British jihadi is killed in Syria and Iraq every three weeks, with around 16 deaths since the start of the year.

Many in Portsmouth blame Choudhury – who had proposed calling the group the “Britani Brigade Bangladeshi Bad Boys” until one of them pointed out the title was too long – for leading the other five men astray.

Choudhury, who was older and ran a youth group for young Muslim men, was arrested when he returned to Gatwick after 18 days abroad. He was convicted of engaging in conduct in preparation of terrorist acts after a 12 day trial at Kingston Crown Court in May.

Hassan’s death comes as the grieving family of an Indian takeaway driver killed by a US air strike in Syria said he was on a humanitarian mission and was not a jihadi.

Kamran ul-Haq, 29, was killed when a building he was in collapsed after being struck by cruise missiles fired at eight “terrorist bases” around Aleppo, on September 22.

But Mr Haq’s family claim he was in Syria to drive an ambulance and deliver humanitarian aid and was “never a fighter”.

Mr Haq’s brother Bari said: “Kamran said he was learning to drive an ambulance. He was a decent guy, not a troublemaker, even before he became religious. He would not pick up a gun to be an action hero.”

Bari says his brother decided to become involved in the Syrian civil war after watching YouTube videos of women and children being killed in late 2011.

The east Londoner, who was married, had been in Syria since December last year and according to his own accounts had spent months ferrying the dead and injured from the conflict to field hospitals near the fighting.

It appears he was killed during US raids targeting the leadership of a group called Khorasan, a previously unknown affiliate of al-Qaeda which Washington claims was planning to attack targets in the west.

The raids also killed two other east Londoners of Bangladeshi heritage and a 19-year-old from Brighton, Ibrahim Kamara, who had travelled to Syria from Britain.