Former British rapper and notorious Islamic State suspect Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, who was arrested in Spain in 2020, went on trial in Madrid on Wednesday.
The 32-year-old former rapper from west London, who allegedly posted an image of himself holding a severed head on Twitter, went on trial at Spain’s Audiencia Nacional criminal court for joining the Islamic State (IS) group while visiting Syria between 2013 and 2015.
Prosecutors also accuse him of running “online scams” with two friends to fund “terrorist activities”. They are calling for a nine-year jail sentence.
When he was arrested in April 2020 in the southern town of Almería several days after arriving by boat from Algeria, police described the British-Egyptian national as one of IS’s “most wanted foreign terrorist fighters”.
Originally from Maida Vale in London, Bary was a joint British-Egyptian national but he was stripped of his UK citizenship because of his links to the terror group.
He is accused of publishing a grisly photo in August 2014 in which he can be seen posing with a severed head in the Syrian city of Raqqa with the caption: “Chillin’ with my homie or what’s left of him.”
Standing in court, Bary – who has put on considerable weight since his arrest three years ago – denied all the charges against him.
“I find it absurd that [the prosecution is saying] I’m one of the foreign terrorist fighters,” he told the court, wearing a patterned short-sleeved shirt, black jeans and dark-framed glasses, his mostly shaved head topped by a ponytail.
“Al-Qaida and all the radical extremists … I hate them. I don’t agree with their ideology or their actions,” he said, speaking in a mix of Spanish and English.
He also denied owning any Twitter accounts that promoted IS, saying he went to Syria “for humanitarian reasons”.
Bary also denied ever visiting Raqqa, saying it was not him in the photo with the severed head.
He is the son of Adel Abdel Bary, an Egyptian who in 2015 was jailed for 25 years by a US court for his involvement in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 and wounded 5,000 others.
During a brief career as a rapper in London he was known as Lyricist Jinn and L Jinny, and he performed with a group called the Black Triangle. After immersing in his faith, he denounced his former life and friends. He left his family and five siblings for the IS stronghold of Raqqa in July 2013.
