Wife spies on German rapper-turned-IS militant

Alleged spouse goes undercover for the FBI

In the wake of the recent round of beheading videos issued by the Islamic State (IS), news surfaces that German-born rapper Denis Cuspert, who featured in the footage, was being spied on by a woman thought to be his wife for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), reported Al-Arabiya News. Going by the name Abu Talha al-Amani, Cuspert travelled to Syria in 2013 to join the ranks of the militant group, and the United States added him to the list of global terrorists last week, freezing his assets under US control and prohibiting transactions with him in the future, the Daily Mail reported.

Cuspert, 39, was reportedly being spied on by a woman, who communicated crucial information about him and his IS colleagues to her handler, reported German newspaper Bild, citing German and American intelligence sources as confirming the operation. “We were already a long time in the bedrooms of the terrorists,” a German intelligence official was quoted as saying.

The former rapper was reportedly a Casanova in Germany. It is not known if he ‘married’ the woman spy but the German newspaper reported, “She informed her US handler via secret methods on regular basis about IS activities. It was unclear how she transmitted the information to her handler.” The woman allegedly left Syria as IS began to hunt for spies, after which she escaped to Turkey, where she was arrested and believed to be turned to the US.



The US State Department said the rapper epitomises what the IS looks for in recruits. “Cuspert is emblematic of the type of foreign recruit IS seeks for its ranks – individuals, who have engaged in criminal activity in their home countries, who then travel to Iraq and Syria to commit far worse crimes against the people of those countries.”

Cuspert has appeared in multiple videos from the group, including one in November “in which he appears holding a severed head he claims belongs to a man executed for opposing IS,” said the State Department. He has pledged allegiance to IS Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and is reportedly a chief recruiter of German fighters.

He was compared to Nazi minister for propaganda Joseph Goebbels in November for his ability to make an impassioned appeal to and pivot the young, disillusioned people in Europe. He spent years in the Berlin hip-hop scene under the pseudonym ‘Deso Dogg’. The lyrics of his song Who’s Afraid of the Black Man show his hatred toward the West and streak of violence. “In a white world full of hate and illusion, the last option was only violence and emotion,” goes the song.

Now a part of IS, he is known to oversee the group’s media operation. He reportedly leads a group of German-speaking IS terrorists under the name ‘The German Brigade of Millatu Ibrahim’. According to a dossier compiled by German security services, Cuspert was quoted as saying, “My duty is to use my voice for telling people the truth and the truth is jihad is a duty.”

Published in The Express Tribune, February 18^th,  2015.

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