London man says young boy in ISIL execution video is his grandson
LONDON — A man in the British capital says his grandson is the child seen in a new Islamic State video that purports to show five hostages being murdered in Syria.
The video, released Sunday, begins with a masked militant with a British accent denouncing British Prime Minister David Cameron before extremists shoot the hostages, who the terror group said were spying for Britain.
The footage concludes with an English-speaking young boy wearing military-style clothes pointing into the distance, saying: "We are going to go kill the kafir (unbelievers) over there."
Henry Dare, who also goes by the name Sunday Dare, told Britain's Channel 4 that the child is the son of his daughter, who converted from Christianity to Islam when she was a teenager and left London for Syria some years ago. Paste BN could not independently verify his claim.
"He doesn't know anything. He's a small boy. They (the Islamic State) are just using him as a shield," Dare told Channel 4.
In 2014, his daughter posted a photograph on Twitter of the boy, then thought to be 4, holding a Kalashnikov automatic rifle.
Dare said he last spoke to his daughter weeks ago. "I keep on ignoring her calls because she has brought shame to our family and to herself," he told Channel 4. He said that his grandson "doesn't like it over there." Paste BN is not naming the boy because of his age.
Several British news organizations identified the masked man who speaks in the video as former London resident Siddhartha Dhar, 32, also known as Abu Rumaysah. The BBC on Tuesday cited an unnamed government official who said Dhar is the focus of an investigation into the identity of the man.
The broadcaster said Dhar, the father of four from east London was arrested on suspicion of encouraging terrorism, but left Britain in 2014 for Syria while on bail. Andy Burnham, a politician from the opposition Labour party, said there was a serious lapse of security and called for an inquiry into how a person on bail for a terrorism offence could have left for Syria.
Dhar's sister, Konika Dhar, told the BBC that she initially feared the militant in the video could be her brother when she first heard the audio, but now wasn't sure.
"I believed the audio to resemble, from what I remember, the voice of my brother but having viewed the short clip in detail, I wasn't entirely convinced which put me at ease," she said.
The video bears similarities to previous Islamic State execution videos featuring Mohammed Emwazi, a London-raised militant also known as "Jihadi John." Emwazi was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Syria in November.