The Muhajireen Brigade, a unit made up of foreign jihadists who fight in Syria, has announced that a fighter from Denmark was killed while battling the Syrian government in early March. More than 500 Europeans are thought to be fighting with the rebels in Syria.
In a video released on jihadist forums yesterday, the Muhajireen Brigade (Emigrants Brigade), which is allied with the Al Nusrah Front, al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, announced the death of Danish citizen Kenneth Sørensen. The video was obtained and translated by the SITE Intelligence group.
Sørensen, who was also known as Abu ‘Aisha al Dinmarki and Abdul Malik al Dinmarki, was killed on March 3. He had “an appointment with martyrdom to attain what he wished for in the countryside of Latakia, in a fierce battle between the heroes of Islam and the soldiers of the regime,” the video said, according to SITE.
“Our brother Abu ‘Aisha stood bravely and charged head on and didn’t run away, until he passed,” the video continued.
The Muhajireen Brigade recounted that Sørensen had traveled to Yemen, Lebanon. Egypt, and Libya before deciding to join the group. He was reportedly “detained in Yemen and Lebanon, because he frequented mosques and religious scholars.” Sørensen had claimed he was tortured while in custody, and the Muhajireen Brigade said that a Danish television channel did a story on his detentions.
While in Yemen, Sørensen attended the radical Imam University in Sana’a, which is run by Abdulmajid al Zindani, who is on the US’s list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists for his ties to Osama bin Laden. The US Treasury Department has described Zindani as a “bin Laden loyalist” who has provided crucial support to al Qaeda. Anwar al Awlaki, the American who served as a key leader in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, also lectured at Imam University.
According to Morten Storm, who claims to have served as a double agent for Denmark’s intelligence service and to have helped the US kill Anwar al Awlaki in a drone strike in 2011, Sørensen was not given access to Awlaki as he “was considered too boisterous and problematic by the Islamists,” The Copenhagen Post reported last November. Storm and another Dane, known as Allen H., are said to have met with Awlaki.
Sørensen lived in Egypt for three years, then moved with his family to Libya as its civil war raged. Once Syria’s civil war broke out, Sørensen “left his wife and four children in Libya and deployed to the Levant and joined the ranks of the Muhajireen Brigade and rose to fight the apostate Nusayri [Alawite] gangs.”
Sørensen is one of hundreds of Europeans believed to be fighting in Syria. According to SAPO, Sweden’s intelligence service, over 500 Europeans are thought be battling against the Syrian government; many are thought to be fighting for the Muhajireen Brigade and the Al Nusrah Front.
The Muhajireen Brigade is commanded by Omar al Chechen, a jihadist from Russia’s Caucasus region. The group is known to fight alongside the Nusrah Front and has participated in overrunning several Syrian military bases.
At the end of March, Omar al Chechen announced that the Muhajireen Brigade had merged with several Syrian jihadist groups and formed the Muhajireen Army. The group has “more than 1,000 Mujahideen, Muslim volunteers from different countries, including the Caucasus Emirate,” stated Kavkaz Center, a propaganda arm of the al Qaeda-linked Islamic Caucasus Emirate.
7 Comments
with some luck & the right kind of aid this Civil War in Syria could possibly be kept in motion for quite a few more years. Bad Guys vs Bad Guys is a scenario most difficult to come by. I wonder how long before Iraq finds itself at that Critical Mass threshold & those opposing Assad & Maliki begin subjecting Iran to armed violence. It would also be helpful if Turkey & Jordan began parsing parts of their borders designed to create defensible ‘zones’ for Syrian refugees with a security caveat that keeps the extremist elements such al Nusrah at ‘arms-length.’
I find it quite ironic that those who favor Assad, or don’t favor Assad but are opposed to intervention, use guys like this to point out how bad the Syrian rebels are, yet at the same time they completely ignore the foreign fighters from Iran, Hezbollah, Iraq, Lebanon, and the PFLP-GC that are fighting on the side of the Assad regime. It’s almost like they are a non issue; you know, THOSE foreign fighters are OK, but the ones fighting on the other side are “terrorists”.
Syria is in a bad place. Syrians are being slaughtered like animals by a dictator propped up by foreign fighters, as well as Russian and China vetoing ANY U.N. resolution….. even disallowing U.N. inspectors to go to Syrian refugee camps to talk to civilians!
The Syrians that rose up and asked for more freedoms and reform in 2011 are gone. They are either dead, in another country, or are fighting for their lives. Foreign Salafist Jihadists on the rebel side have filled the gaping void that the world left by not helping Syrians.
And just like Syrians are helpless, being tortured in secret dungeons, bombed, massacred, shot at by regime thugs, we, too, the outside world, are completely helpless too as the outside powers won’t do anything because there is no “real interest”(read: resources, money, influence) they can gain by intervening. And so foreign entities, *that already HAVE intervened* on the regime’s side, are basically playing this game of killing as many Syrian civilians as possible so they can retain their power and geopolitical influence.
All the people that used to say that we live in a new era of humanity, or a “brave new world” as the marketing scheme went, must have been smoking something fierce.
He married a Faroese woman, who converted to islam and was also linked to Danish friends who were involved in a terrorist plot in Bosnia
Good riddance to a terrorist. Rot in hell you human filth.
Not a lot of love lost for Syrians. The same Syrians who allowed thousands of Jihadis to come to Syria so they could cross into Iraq and kill US forces. The same Syrians who allow Iran to run arms through their country to Hezbollah. The same Syrians who allow Lebanon to be used to fight their proxy wars against Israel and murder anyone who stands in their way. Those Syrians? Or the ones fighting the regime so they can institute somehting much worse. Violent, oppressive Sharia law and the Salafi version of radical Islam. Both sides are evil. The devil you know or the devil you don’t know.
Mr T,
That is what is so ironic about pro Assad supporters whining about “terrorists” and ‘foreign fighters”. Look who’s talking!
Another reason why Assad has no justifiable reason to complain about terrorism, is that his actions have radicalized the Sunni communities in the region, as well as enticed foreign Jihadists to come to Syria and fight. His bloodthirsty, tyrannical vice grip on power, which he will hang onto at all costs, is the reason why the conflict, day in day out, keeps getting more horrific, and more fundamentalist in it’s tone. Protesters that demanded reforms and more liberties were replied to with gunfire, airstrikes, snipers, artillery, and being thrown in torture dungeons.
I’m not saying the opposition are free from war crimes and corruption. No way. And I sincerely believe that, like Libya, there WERE extremists there from the beginning. But killing people that want reforms and more liberties just so you can hang onto power never ends well.
How many of these European jihadis in Syria have no Arab or Islamic heritage? I think this guy was exceptional because he did not. Most of them are second generation immigrants from the Middle East.