A Nigerian born United Kingdom immigrant has identified the 4-year old boy featured in a recent video by terrorist group, ISIS, as his grandson.
The video, it was gathered, was released through ISIS channels on Jan. 3 and showed a group of ISIS militants executing five supposed British spies.
In the video, the young boy can be heard calling for slaughter in Allah’s name. He says, “We are going to go kill the kafir (non-believers) over there.”
Speaking with with a UK-based media organization on the development, Sunday Dare, the boy’s grandfather acknowledged the boy saying: “He’s my grandson. I can’t disown him. I know him very well.
“The Islamic State is just using a small boy. He doesn’t know anything. He’s a small boy. They are just using him as a shield.
The boy was born in 2010 and has been named by some news outlets. The British press has also nicknamed him “Jihadi Junior.” He has also been seen on social media in photos his mother posted of him holding an AK-47.
The boy’s grandfather, Dare is a Christian Nigerian who migrated to the UK with his daughter, Grace “Khadijah” Dare.
Khadijah was radicalized while at university in London and joined the Islamic State in 2012. She had reportedly praised the beheading of an American journalist, James Foley, and said she wanted to be the first woman to behead a hostage.
Khadijah Dare, who was christened Grace by her parents, grew up in Lewisham to Nigerian Christian parents, but converted to Islam as a teenager before leaving for Syria.
In 2014, she posted a photograph on her personal Twitter account of her then four-year-old son Isa, meaning Jesus in Arabic, smiling with an AK-47 rifle.
All her social media account, or those linked to her, are known for posting pro-ISIS messages, encouraging other young women to make the journey to the war zone and she is one of the first known western women to have travelled to Syria.
Dare said he recently spoke to his daughter ‘weeks ago, when she called me’. “I keep on ignoring her calls because she has brought shame to our family and to herself,” he said.
