A London-based father tells Channel 4 News a young boy featured in an Islamic State video nicknamed Jihadi Junior is his grandson.
Sunday Dare said he had seen an image of his grandson Isa from the video. “He’s my grandson. I can’t disown him. I know him very well,” he said.
“He’s propaganda. They are just using a small boy. They are just using him as a shield.”
Mr Dare, from Lewisham, south London, is the father of Grace (Khadijah) Dare, who is living in Syria. She left London and married a Swedish jihadi fighter, Abu Bakr, who is now dead.
They, and the boy, featured in footage exclusively obtained by Channel 4 News from the American Muslim convert and film-maker Bilal Abdul Kareem and first broadcast in 2013 (watch video below).
It is not possible to immediately verify whether the two children in the videos are the same person, but they bear a striking physical resemblance and would now be roughly the same age. In the footage from Idlib province, Ms Dare shoots a Kalashnikov for the camera and then fires off a revolver.
Mr Dare said his daugher should return to Britain to “face the music”. He said she had called him from Syria “weeks ago”, having “brought shame” on the family (watch the interview below).
He said he had reported her to the police on three occasions before she left for Syria and told them “she’s behaving in a very funny way”. “They told me she’s free,” he said. “They said she’s above 18.”
The Muslim convert, who grew up in a Christian Nigerian family, had told him she was going to Egypt to study and when he found out she was in Syria, “I dropped the phone on her because I was annoyed”.
In the IS video, the boy, who looks four or five, issues threats against “the unbelievers” in English. The video, which shows five people being murdered, is now being examined by the British security services.