A former London rapper was arrested Monday in southern Spain on suspicion of joining Islamic State fighters in Syria.
Police arrested Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary and two other men at a rented apartment. Abdel Bary is the son of an Egyptian operative of al-Qaeda who was convicted for events related to the 1998 bombings at U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 people.
A media release from Spain’s National Police didn’t name Abdel Bary. It described him as an Egyptian national who left Europe to fight in Syria and Iraq.
The police statement also called him “one of the most sought terrorists in Europe, both because of his criminal trajectory in the ranks of Daesh (Islamic State) and because of the high danger that he represented.”
He and the two other men were arrested overnight in southeastern Spain.
The three were being interrogated on Tuesday and were scheduled to appear before a National Court judge in Madrid on Wednesday, according to a spokesman for the court that usually handles terror-related case. The spokesman who was not authorized to be named in media reports.
Police said the operation was the result of “international cooperation” between agents specialized in fighting terrorism who suspected that the Egyptian suspect might be traveling through Spain as he tried to return home from the Mideast.
Abdel Bary, who is believed to be 29, grew up in London to become a rapper known as Lyricist Jinn and L Jinny. Music videos still available online show him performing raps with references to drug use, violence and his family’s experience as asylum-seekers in Britain.
His radicalization reportedly took place shortly after his father, Abdel Abdul Bary, was extradited in 2012 to the United States, where he was tried for the twin bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The father was convicted in New York and sentenced in 2015 to a 25-year prison term.
In a 2013 post still viewable on what appeared to be his Facebook account, the younger Abdul Bary left a message for his fans: “I have left everything for the sake of Allah,” he wrote. One year later, in August 2014, a photo of him holding a man’s severed head was posted on Twitter.
British investigators initially suspected Abdel Bary as being “Jihadi John,” the IS militant who spoke with a British accent in the video showing the execution of American journalist James Foley. Foley, one of the Islamic State group’s early foreign victims, was decapitated. The real “Jihadi John” turned out to be Mohammed Emwazi, who also grew up in London.
Britain’s Foreign Office declined to comment on Tuesday’s arrests, referring queries to the Spanish police.
