Nigerian boy joins ISIS, appears in beheading video

A NIGERIAN, Henry Sunday Dare, has identified Isa, the four-year-old boy in the latest ISIS video as his grandson.

In the video, which showed some ISIS militants executing five supposed British spies, Isa was heard calling in Allah’s name, for the execution of the individuals.

Speaking with a correspondence of a UK-based media organization on the development, Dare, acknowledged the boy, saying: “He’s my grandson. I can’t disown him. I know him very well.

“The Islamic State (IS) is just using a small boy. He doesn’t know anything. He’s a small boy. They are just using him as a shield.

Isa appeared at the end of the 11-minute video that surfaced on Sunday. He was wearing military fatigues and warned in English: “We are going to go kill the kafir (non-believers) over there.”

Dare is a Christian Nigerian who migrated to the UK with his daughter, Grace “Khadijah” Dare.

Khadijah was radicalized while at a university in London. She 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, 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 photo- graph 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.

The boy was born in 2010 and has been named by some news outlets. The British press has also nicknamed him ‘Jihadi Junior’.

Meanwhile, hungry Boko Haram terrorists have raided a Borno State community, set ablaze many houses and stole foodstuffs and livestocks.

Aliyu Maina, a fleeing resident of Tosiha, a remote community in southern Borno, told Daily Sun on phone that some insurgents rode to the village on bicycles at about 9.30pm on Monday, “throwing bombs into houses,” a development which forced many villagers to flee.

“There was confusion every- where and the Boko Haram men started entering people’s houses or barns looking for foodstuffs. They carted away bags of grains, beans and chicken,” he said, an account corroborated by one of the vigilance leaders in Chibok, some 11 kilometres to Toshia.

The vigilance leader who doesn’t want to be named, said no life was lost. He noted that some residents were injured, adding that many of them have fled to Chibok where over 200 schoolgirls were kidnapped by the insurgents on April 14, 2014.

Credit: Sun Newspaper