British rapper on trial in Spain for terrorist financing

Abdelmajed Abdel Bary, alias L. Jinny, a British rapper of Egyptian origin and ex-combatant of the Islamic State in Syria, will be tried from Wednesday at the National Court for being part of a jihadist cell dedicated to Internet banking scams to “finance their terrorist activities”.

Abdel Bary, in provisional prison since his arrest in April 2020 in Almería and who is facing a request from the prosecutor for 9 years in prison, moved in August 2013 from the United Kingdom to Syria to fight with the Islamic State, Bary acknowledged belonging on various occasions in their social networks.

He travelled there with a friend and both joined the Al Furqan Army, a terrorist faction of Al Qaeda that sometimes acted with Daesh in certain actions, the prosecutor recounted in his brief with provisional conclusions.

After the death of his friend in a US drone attack, in 2015 he travelled to Turkey, until in 2020 he went to Algeria. During those years, Abdel Bary created “a criminal structure with a vocation for permanence over time” in order to commit bank fraud through the system known as “carding” (illegally accessing bank cards to make small purchases), which allowed them to “finance their terrorist activities”.

For this task, he allied himself with two other men arrested with him in 2020, Abderrezak Seddiki and Kossaila Chollouah, who will also sit on the bench accused of integration into a terrorist organisation, and for whom the Prosecutor’s Office is asking for 8 and 7 years in prison, respectively.

The three “formed a group that assumes and participates in the means and violent procedures of the Islamic State organisation (or DAESH), with the ultimate goal of consolidating an Islamic caliphate governed by the Koran and Sharia,” the prosecutor states.

The rapper allegedly led the group and was engaged in acquiring on the “Darkweb”, the “dark internet”, financial data previously stolen by cloned or stolen card providers, whom he paid with virtual currencies such as Bitcoin.

Then, thanks to “contacts and front men” of the terrorists, Chollouah “managed to convert the money defrauded and converted into cryptocurrencies by Abdel Bary and Seddiki into money that could be used again (such as the dollar, the lira, the yen or the euro)”.

Once the three defendants were in Algeria at the beginning of 2020, from there they prepared their introduction into Spain “in order to maintain the member cell of the Islamic State organisation.”

The General Information Commissioner of the National Police learned that the three defendants intended to enter Spain illegally, something they achieved on the night of April 13 to 14, 2020 aboard a ship from Algeria that docked at some point in the Cabo de Gata Natural Park, in Almería.

The Police discovered that the three defendants were in a tourist rental apartment located at number 20 Calle Cádiz in the capital of Almería, and on April 20 they were arrested at that same address.

At the time of the arrest, Abdel Bary identified himself to the Police as Ahmed El Ulebi, for which his fingerprint identification was carried out to corroborate his identity, while Seddiki presented a French passport with his photograph that turned out to be false, for which reason He is also accused of a forgery crime.

Bary, who grew up in the UK, was subsequently stripped of his British citizenship.

The post British rapper on trial in Spain for terrorist financing appeared first on Spain Today – Breaking Spanish News, Sport, and Information.