Abdel Bary, during his statement in the trial of the National Court, on July 12.
Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, the British ex-rapper tried this July in the National Court for allegedly traveling to Syria to fight in the ranks of the self-styled Islamic State (ISIS), has been found dead on Wednesday in his prison cell, whose location has not transcended, where he was in provisional detention awaiting his sentence, As confirmed by legal and penitentiary sources, who have specified that the causes of death are still unknown. According to his defense, the family has already been informed, who wants to request that a private autopsy be performed, beyond the official one.
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A former rapper accused of jihadism defends himself: "Regarding ISIS or Al Qaeda, my feeling is one of hatred"
On July 14, the National Court left for sentencing the trial held against Abdel Bary, a 33-year-old former rapper who signed songs with the alias of L Jinny and who, in 2013, left behind the United Kingdom to travel to Syria. According to the intelligence services and the Prosecutor's Office, the alleged jihadist joined the ranks of ISIS there as a foreign fighter, until he left the Asian country in 2015. Then, in April 2020, he was arrested in Almería along with Algerians Abderrezak Siddiki and Kossaila Cholluah, aged 31 and 27 respectively, who also sat in the dock. According to their own account, the three entered Spain by boat, taking advantage of the routes of irregular arrival of immigrants.
The security forces maintain that the three had formed a jihadist cell that intended to "commit any type of action related to their terrorist militancy or, at least, gather local support to travel" through Europe. The Prosecutor's Office explains that, among other tasks, they were dedicated to the search for "financing of their terrorist activities", including through bank scams. "Its ultimate goal was to consolidate an Islamic caliphate ruled by the Koran and Sharia [Islamic law]," the public prosecutor said in its indictment, where it requested nine years in prison for Abdel Bary; eight for Seddiki (who was found to have a false passport); and seven for Cholluah.
Abdel Bary, who had been in pre-trial detention since his arrest in 2020, denied all the allegations during the trial. "It's not true what is said. I did not travel to Syria to protect Islam, nor to fight. I traveled for humanitarian reasons," he defended himself in court on July 12. "My family and I have lived in the UK for over 30 years. I have completely adopted the Western lifestyle [...] I believe in freedom of belief. And regarding ISIS or Al Qaeda, my feeling is one of hatred. I don't agree with their ideology or their actions."
Born in Egypt but raised in Britain, Abdel Bary had for years remained under the radar of intelligence forces. Agents consider him a "violent" radical and he was once singled out as one of Europe's most wanted suspected jihadists. He is the son of Adel Abdelmajed Abdelbary, a longtime Al Qaeda terrorist extradited to the United States for participating in the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. In one of her rulings, Judge María Tardón points out that she uploaded to social networks in 2014 "a photograph of himself holding the head of a person in a square in Raqqa (Syria)." The agents identify him in several images posted online with "Kalashnikov-type assault rifles or machine guns."
However, Abdel Bary denied everything in the trial: "I have never been to Raqqa [...] I am not the one of those images," he stressed in the trial, where he remarked that, in those snapshots, the faces of the people who appear are not seen: "I do not know who it is. I don't even know if the weapons are real or not. I don't understand how they can assume they are real." According to him, he went to Syria to carry out "humanitarian" work, and helped the population affected by the war and set up a cafeteria in Atma, a town near the border with Turkey and where a refugee camp was built.
According to the police, images of Abdel Bary uploaded to his social networks where "he carries assault rifles type 'kalashnikov' or machine guns."
As EL PAÍS revealed, the Police captured Abdel Bary and the other two defendants in Almería on April 20, 2020, after following the trail they had left in mobile applications to order food at home. The intelligence services had communicated their suspicions that the group would try to access the Peninsula and that, with the country confined by the coronavirus pandemic, it could use the entry routes of immigrants. During their testimony at the hearing, the three insisted that they do not share the jihadist ideology.
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