I am a real idiot to do this: How 16 jihadis come from south Manchester suburbs. The suburbs of hate

Thursday, May 25, 2017

How 16 jihadis come from south Manchester suburbs. The suburbs of hate

A network of jihadis willing to carry out deadly attacks in the name of their warped ideology has emerged from just a few square miles in Manchester in recent years, it has emerged.

Suburbs across the south of the city, including Moss Side and Fallowfield, have produced up to 16 jihadis who have either fled to Syria or Iraq, been killed fighting for their cause or are now in jail.

Salman Abedi, who murdered 22 people at an Ariana Grande concert on Monday night, grew up around the same estates as a group of young men who radicalised each other, it has been claimed.

There are fears he was part of a wider network of fanatics in Manchester – a cell that once included top ISIS recruiter, Raphael Hostey, who grew up less than a mile from the suicide bomber’s home in Fallowfield.

Hostey, a one-time rapper boasted of smuggling ‘hundreds’ of people into Syria before he was killed in a drone strike in April 2016.

He sponsored a number of young men from Moss Side, including former RAF gunner and Muslim convert Stephen Gray and Raymond Matimba in their attempts to join ISIS.

Hostey left Liverpool John Moores University and fled to Syria with 20-year-old students Khalil Raoufi, from Didsbury, and Mohammed Javeed, from Levenshulme.

Javeed was killed in a suicide attack in Iraq in 2014 while Raoufi died in combat in February the same year.

It was not the last time Hostey was linked to suspected jihadi recruitment.

Abedi’s sister Jomana, 18, was in the same year at the same school in Whalley Range that hit headlines in 2015 when 16-year-old ‘terror twins’ Zahra and Salma Halane moved to Syria to become jihadi brides – reportedly recruited by Hostey. It is unclear whether they are still alive.

Moss Side was also home to 50-year-old former Guantanamo Bay detainee, Ronald Fiddler, also known as Jamal al-Harith (pictured)

Investigators were also looking into possible links between Abedi and Abdalraouf Abdallah (pictured), a Libyan refugee, also from Moss Side in Manchester

Abdallah was shot in Libya and later jailed in the U.K. for terror offenses, including helping Stephen Gray (pictured), a British Iraqi war veteran and Muslim covert, to join fighters in Syria

The Manchester Arena bomber went to school with their brother Ahmed Halane, 24, at Burnage Academy, a boy’s school catering largely to the city’s Asian community. Ahmed is a terror suspect himself, banned from Britain under an exclusion order.

The twins’ cousin, student Abdullahi Ahmed Jama Farah, also from Manchester, was jailed for seven years in 2016 for acting as a communications chief for a battalion of British ISIS fighters known as the ‘Britanni Brigade.’

He was prosecuted after helping his friend Nur Hassan, 19, from Manchester, travel to Syria to join ISIS.

Five other friends from Manchester with links to extremism kept close contact with Farah as he ran communications for their ‘Britanni Brigade’.

Moss Side was also home to 50-year-old former Guantanamo Bay detainee, Ronald Fiddler, also known as Jamal al-Harith.

The Briton blew himself up at a military base in Iraq in February after fleeing to the country to join ISIS.

He was one of 16 men awarded a total of £10million in compensation in 2010, when the British government settled a lawsuit alleging its intelligence agencies were complicit in the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. It is thought Abedi may also have been inspired by his action.