Australian jihadists are being ‘martyred’ in the Middle East. Here’s a few of those we know most about
NEIL Prakash is the latest name added to the ranks of Islamic State’s dead. But he is but one of more than 100 Australians inspired to wage violent jihad on the west.
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NEIL Prakash is just the latest Australian name added to the ranks of Islamic State’s dead.
Inspired to wage violent jihad on behalf of Islamic State, more than 100 Australians are now international outcasts.
ASIO has identified 110 citizens as fighting or working for Islamic State or other Middle East based terrorist organisations. The exact number remains unknown.
But all now face the loss of the Australian citizenship under measures introduced by the Federal Government last year.
With each death, the embattled Islamic State is finding it harder to find a replacement.
Efforts to stem the flow of recruits out of the country have been stepped up.
In the past financial year, Federal Government figures reveal 145 passports have been cancelled, 26 suspended and 22 applications rejected among people suspected of attempting to join Islamic State.
It’s an effort being matched around the world.
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Islamic State’s international recruitment success has fallen off significantly.
Its social media presence has been drastically curtailed, both through efforts by Western agencies as well as the jihadist organisation’s own new bans.
For the jihadists, social media has proven to be a double-edged sword: Fighters boasting about their exploits online to attract fresh recruits have been unintentionally revealing their locations — and those of key Islamic State personnel and facilities.
Twitter alone has cancelled more than 125,000 terror-associated accounts since June last year — most of them active in Syria and Iraq.
The targeted assassination of several high-profile recruiters, including Prakash, has further stymied Islamic State’s efforts to recover from a string of military setbacks in recent months.
But many Australians remain among the high-profile recruits fighting for terror-associated organisations in the Middle East.
Here is a summary of the best known among them, and those who may have lost their lives.
MOST WANTED
Mostafa Farag (Sheikh Abu Sulayman al-Muhajir), 31, Sydney
Former Sydney cleric Mostafa Farag is regarded by Australian Intelligence officials to be the most senior Australian jihadist in Syria. Farag went to Syria in 2012 and joined the militant group Jabhat al-Nusra, a bitter rival to Islamic State. He rapidly rose through the ranks to become a member of the organisation’s leading council. Using the name Sheikh Abu Sulayman al-Muhajir, he has been accused of recruiting other Australians and soliciting funds for terrorist activities. Farag is named on a US military assassination list of key terror commanders because of his group’s close association with al-Qaeda
Erdem Yanar (Abu Khaled al-Turki), 16, Melbourne
Islamic State recruitment documents leaked earlier this year list Yanar as a ‘learner’ who held qualifications as a ‘personal bodyguard’ and ‘mail distributor’ who wanted to be a computer engineer.
He is believed to have been recruited by former Melbourne man Mounir Raad (Abu Adam al-Australi) who is now believed to be fighting in Syria.
Yanar is thought to have crossed into Islamic State held territory in September 2014.
Zehra Duman, 21, Melbourne
Jihadi widow Zehra Duman remains at large in Syria and continues to post online tributes to her slain husband, Mahmoud Abullatif, and attempt to recruit new ‘jihadi brides’ for Islamic State.
The former Keysborough student of Turkish descent travelled to Syria in December without her parents’ knowledge and is living in the de facto Islamic State capital, Raqqa.
The jihadi bride is resisting her parents’ pleas to return home and appears to remain committed to Abullatif, posting pictures in tribute to the “martyr” who was reportedly killed while fighting with Islamic State in January 2015.
Abraham Succarieh, 30, Brisbane
Abraham Succarieh is believed to be fighting for terror group Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria.
Succarieh flew from Brisbane to Dubai the day before his “martyred” brother, Ahmed, blew himself up in Syria. He is now believed to be commanding a unit of 50 foreign fighters, including Australians.
The third Succarieh brother, Omar, was arrested in Brisbane in September 2014 for allegedly attempting to recruit new fighters and sending money to his brother Abraham and other members of Jabhat al-Nusra, a rival of Islamic State.
Real name unknown (Abu Mounzir al-Lubnani), 25
Details of this Australian citizen, a trained pilot, were among a cache of Islamic documents leaked by a disillusioned former member earlier this year.
He is recorded as being married and having previously held a job as a construction worker. He entered Syria with the intention to fight for the jihadist group in late 2013.
Real name unknown (Abu Ubaida al-Lubnani), 36
Also listed among the leaked Islamic State documents, Ubaida was documented as having been previously arrested in Australia on terrorism charges — but later released. His qualifications are listed as computer engineer and human resources manager. He also joined Islamic State in late 2013.
AMONG THE DEAD
Neil Prakash (Abu Khaled al-Cambodi), Melbourne
Generally regarded as the most highly ranked Australian fighting for Islamic State, Prakash had featured in the jihadist organisation’s propaganda campaign. He was also accused of extensive recruitment and terrorism plot activities.
He was directly targeted by a US air strike which killed up to 10 other jihadists when the Mosul, Iraq, building they were in was demolished. He was previously reported killed in a January air strike on a Mosul bank.
Prakash was on a US government assassination list of key Islamic State personnel.
He was the child of Fijian migrants and was linked to various Melbourne gangs as a teenager. He had also been an aspiring rapper before entering Syria in 2013 to join Islamic State.
Shadi Jabar Khalil Mohammad
Mohammad and her Sudanese husband, Abu Sa’ad al-Sudani, were both active recruiters of foreign fighters on behalf of ISIL, and had been inspiring attacks against Western interests. She was killed on April 22 in a US air strike near Al Bab in Syria.
Mohammad was the sister of Farhad Mohammad, the 15-year-old boy who shot dead police accountant Curtis Cheng at police headquarters in the Sydney suburb of Parramatta in October. Farhad Mohammad was killed in a gunfight with police.
Mohamed Elomar (Abu Hafs al Australi), 29, Sydney
The former Western Sydney boxer, known as ‘Moey’, spent time in the Syrian city of Raqqa but also fought for Islamic State in Iraq.
Once one of the most celebrated boxers rising through the ranks in Australia, Elomar slipped in to Iraq with his friend Khaled Sharrouf.
He was an active Islamic State propagandist, appearing in several videos and posting numerous images holding up severed heads of fallen soldiers. He was accused of enslaving and raping women from the Yazidi religious minority in northern Iraq.
It is understood Elomar was one of a group of Islamic State fighters, including his friend Khaled Sharrouf, killed when their convoy was struck by a US drone strike.
Khaled Sharrouf (Abu Zarqawi), 33, Sydney
The former Sydney-based convicted terrorist was fighting with Islamic State in Iraq. He was a close associate of Mohamed Elomar, with propaganda images depicting the pair’s bloody exploits while cruising around Islamic State held territory in a luxury car.
Sharrouf, who in 2014 posted a photo on the internet of his young son holding up a severed head, was on a terrorist watchlist and used his brother’s passport to leave Australia.
He is believed to have been killed in a drone strike last year.
Tara Nettleton (Umm Zarqawi), 31, Sydney
Tara Nettleton met her husband to be, Khaled Sharrouf, while they were students at NSW Chester Hill High School. She travelled to Syria with their five children in 2013 to join him.
She died last year from complications relating to surgery for appendicitis.
Their children, aged between 5 and 15, remain in the war-torn region despite their grandmother Karen’s best efforts to recover them.
Abdullah Elmir, 18, Sydney
The former Bankstown butcher became an Islamic State poster boy after appearing in a propaganda video attacking former Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
The “Ginger Jihadi” ran away from his Bankstown home last June with his 16-year-old friend Feiz after telling his family he was going fishing.
The pair travelled from Sydney to Perth, then onto Malaysia and Thailand and finally to Turkey, where they contacted their families to say they were about to cross the border into Syria. Feiz was eventually found by his father, who convinced him to return home.
Elmir reportedly married British teen runaway Amira Abase before dying in a bombing raid in Syria in late 2015.
Suhan Rahman (Abu Jihad al Australi), 23, Melbourne
The Melbourne university student travelled to Syria in June 2014 with friend Mahmoud Abdullatif, before meeting up with Sydney extremist Mohamed Elomar and fellow jihadist Khaled Sharrouf.
The Roxburgh Park man was active in the Syrian conflict zone, from where he urged Australian Muslims to “spill blood” and appeared in photos on social media posing with a sliver-plated machinegun.
A woman claiming to be his wife said Rahman had been killed fighting for the Islamic State in its failed attempt to take the Kurdish city of Kobane early last year.
Jake Bilardi, 18, Melbourne
Islamic State claims the Craigieburn teenager blew up some cars and killed himself in a co-ordinated car suicide bomb attack in Ramadi, west of Baghdad on Wednesday March 11, 2015.
Bilardi left Australia to join the Islamic State in mid-2014. He wrote of plans of a suicide mission in Iraq and scoffed at suggestions Islamic State was using international members as propaganda.
Adam Dahman, 18, Melbourne
The Northcote suicide bomber reportedly travelled Iraq in November 2010.
The teenager blew himself up in a Shi’ite area of Baghdad, outside an Iraq mosque, in July 2014.
Dahman is the brother-in-law of Ahmed Raad, who was convicted of being the treasurer of Benbrika’s terror cell and was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years’ prison.
Sammy Salma, 22, Melbourne
The man from Roxburgh Park, in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, was killed in an explosion in Aleppo, April 2013, while fighting Assad forces.
Salma had links to al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra.
He had spent time at the same boxing gym as Roger Abbas, a champion kickboxer from Meadow Heights, who was killed in Syria in October 2013.
Yusuf Toprakkaya, 30, Melbourne
Toprakkaya has been on the US watch list when he left his wife and son in Broadmeadows, in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, to travel to Syria to fight with rebel forces in 2012.
Upon arrival in Syria he reportedly wandered along the Syrian border, until he found a group willing to smuggle him into the war zone, where he was reportedly trained as a marksman and bomb maker.
He was killed by sniper fire in Syria in December 2012 while fighting with rebel groups against al-Assad forces near Maarat Numan.
Roger Abbas, 23, Melbuorne
The Melbourne kickboxing champion regularly prayed at the Preston Mosque in Melbourne’s north, and family maintain he was providing aid in war-torn Syria before he became involved with terrorist group Jubhat al-Nusra.
He was killed in crossfire in Syria, near the Turkish border, in October 2012.
Abu Ousama (Abu Safiyya Australi)
Generally known as the ‘Coco Pops terrorist’, the jihadist believed to be from Sydney rose to notoriety following an interview with Channel 7 where he stated he missed Coco Pops.
A member of al-Qaeda affiliat Jabhat Al-Nusra group, he was killed when the village his unit was occupying in Syria was attacked.
Mahmoud Abullatif, 23, Melbourne
The former party boy joined Islamic State in Syria late last year and was reportedly killed in January while fighting for the terrorist group.
The radical Melbourne man — who was prolific on social media — fled to Syria with a friend, Suhan Rahman, and was joined shortly after by his wife Australian-Turkish woman, Zehra Duman.
Abullatif, who attended Brunswick Secondary College, often uploaded photos of himself from the frontline, posing with guns to Facebook.
In January Ms Duman tweeted that her husband was in heaven but his death remains unconfirmed.
Mustapha Al Majzoub, 30, Sydney
The “extremist preacher” Sheikh Mustapha Al Majzoub was killed in a rocket attack in Syria in August 2012.
The Saudi Arabia-born man, who was reportedly on the radar of Australian security service, was president of the Islamic Awareness Association.
His family maintain he was engaged in humanitarian and charity work when he was killed.
Mohammad Ali Baryalei, 33, Sydney
The former Kings Cross bouncer and senior Islamic State member left Australia for Syria via Tokyo in April 2013.
The one-time Underbelly actor, who became the highest ranked Australian IS operative, was reportedly killed in October 2014, although his death is unconfirmed.
Baryalei, also known as Abu Omar, was born to an aristocratic Afghan family and came to Australia as a child refugee.
He is believed to be responsible for recruiting most of the Australian jihadis.
Zakaryah Raad, 22
Zakaryah Raad travelled to Syria and appeared in a 13-minute propaganda video for Islamic State, titled “There is No Life Without Jihad” before being killed in June 2014.
The video said Mr Raad had died a “martyr” following filming.
He was once convicted for his part in whipping a Muslim covert 40 times as punishment for drinking alcohol and taking drugs.
Ahmad Moussalli, Sydney
The Lebanese-Australian graduate of South Strathfield High School was killed on the Syrian battlefront in February 2014.
He had been studying Arabic in Egypt since late 2012 before slipping into Syria some time in 2013.
Caner Temel, 22, Sydney
The former Australian soldier was allegedly recruited to fight the Assad regimen for al-Qaeda and its affiliate Jabha al-Nusra.
The 22-year-old of Turkish descent was reportedly killed while fighting in Syria’s civil war in January 2014.
Temel was from Auburn, in Sydney’s west, but had been based at the Enoggera Barracks in Brisbane’s north, when he went absent without leave.
Temel reportedly joined the Australian Army in February 2009 and was discharged in September 2010.
Ahmed Succarieh, Brisbane
The former Runcorn State High School was killed when he drove a truck laden with explosives into a military checkpoint in the Syrian city of Deir al Zor on September 11, 2013, killing 35 people.
Succarieh, who went by the name Abu Asma al Australi, was from a working-class suburb in Brisbane’s south.
Yusuf Ali, 22, Sydney
The street preacher was born Tyler Casey in the United States before moving to Redcliffe north of Brisbane with his mother.
At 17 he converted to Islam and moved to Sydney where he joined the Street Dawah movement.
It was there he met fellow jihadist Mohammad Ali Baryalei and travelled to where he and his wife, Amira Ali, were shot dead by members of the Free Syrian Army in January 2014 within days of arriving.
Amira Ali (nee Karroum), 22, Gold Coast
The private school girl was killed in Syria in January 2014 within days of arriving in Syria with her husband Yusuf Ali.
The Gold Coast girl had studied graphic design at Queensland University of Technology before moving closer to her Muslim relatives in Sydney in 2012, where she met her husband Yusuf Ali.
In December 2013 she told her family she was going to Denmark to do some humanitarian work, but days later she and her husband were found dead inside their bullet-ridden house.
Zia Abdul Haq, 33, Brisbane
Afghan-born man Abdul Hal, aka Abu Yusseph, is believed to have been killed on October 3, 2014 while fighting for Islamic State in Syria.
The Logan man, who had attended the Holland Park Mosque in Brisbane’s west, reportedly left his son and moved to Syria to join Islamic State after splitting from his wife.
Real name unknown (Abu Nour al-Iraqi)
An Australian man, who went by the name Abu Nour al-Iraqi, is believed to be fighting for Islamic State after identifying himself as Australian in a propaganda video titled “There is No Life without Jihad”.
The man, whose true identity remains unknown appeared in the video with at least one other Australian who used the name Abu Yahya ash Shami but is believed to be Zakaryah Raad.
Subtitles on the video indicated that Abu Yahya ash Shami died after the video was made.
— Additional reporting by Kristin Shorten
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