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'Three Britons' appear in ISIS recruitment video [AlArabiya.net (United Arab Emirates)]
[June 22, 2014]

'Three Britons' appear in ISIS recruitment video [AlArabiya.net (United Arab Emirates)]


(AlArabiya.net (United Arab Emirates) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) A recruitment video for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has surfaced on online which shows three men claiming to be British nationals urging Westerners to join their jihad in Iraq, where Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is facing a growing insurgency led by the militant group.



"Are you willing to sacrifice the fat job you have got, the big car you have got, the family you have? Are you willing to sacrifice this for the sake of Allah?" Abu Bara' al-Hindi, one of several English speakers, asks in the video titled "There's No Life Without Jihad," asks.

"To all my brothers living in the West, I know how you feel [from] when I used to live there. In the heart you feel depressed. The cure for the depression is jihad … all my brothers, come to jihad and feel the honor we are feeling, feel the happiness we are feeling," al-Hindi says.


Al-Hindi is one of three men in the video with distinctly English accents. Captions state the nationality of the men and their noms de guerre. Two of the men are allegedly from Australia.

In the recruitment video the men are seen with weapons surrounded by greenery as they call on Muslims to join their cause.

Another man in the video who was identified as Abu Muthana al-Yemeni says the men are getting ready to fight in Iraq.

"We have participated in battles in Sham [Greater Syria] and we will go to Iraq in a few days and fight there and come back and we will even go to Jordan and Lebanon with no problems," he says.

Al-Yemeni was identified in various U.K. media reports as 20-year-old Nasser Muthana, a medical student from Cardiff.

"I wish I could hold him, hold his hand, ask him to come back," his father, Ahmad, told ITV News.

"As a father, I give a message, not only to Nasser, to all the people that go from Britain to Syria to fight: please stop. Come back home," he said.

In comments to The Daily Telegraph newspaper Friday, Ahmad said his son had been accepted at several universities to study medicine but did not go. He said had not heard from his son since November.

In February, the younger brother also disappeared after it is thought he applied for a second passport.

"To be honest, I don't agree with him, but I don't know what he has been taught in his mind," he said.

"Of course I fear he will be injured or die fighting but I can do nothing. They are conservative Muslim, they don't have girlfriends, they don't talk to girls," he said.

ISIS has gained a foothold in Iraq after securing territory in the north of the country and is threatening to make an advance on the capital Baghdad, where the government has been urging the U.S. for help to quell the insurgency.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister David Cameron said British citizens and other nationals fighting alongside insurgents in Iraq and Syria posed the biggest threat to the United Kingdom's national security.

British nationals fighting in Iraq or Syria could constitute a crime under U.K. terrorism legislation. Some 400 UK nationals are thought to be fighting in Syria.

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