The Kavkaz Press website has claimed to have identified Abu Jihad, the sidekick of Islamic State’s military emir in Syria, Umar Shishani. Abu Jihad has appeared with Umar in a number of videos and has also made several video addresses of his own on various matters; more recently he has made audio addresses and answered questions via the ShamToday channel on Zello. His identity has been a mystery, though it was possible to glean that he had spent time in Egypt and was an ethnic Karachay. The Kavkaz Press (KP) article is entitled “Abu Jihad: The Brand of the Bastards’ Club” KP describes Abu Jihad has a “former renegade and weakling from the village of Ust’-Dzheguta, Islam Seit- Umarovich Atabiyev, born 29.06.1983”. Here is Ust’-Dzheguta, a village in Karachay-Cherkessia, 15 km south of Cherkessk: According to Wikipedia, in 2010 the village had a population of 30,566, about half of whom are ethnic Karachays. Most of the rest are Russians. KP says that Atabiyev was sent to Egypt in 2003 alongside his older brother Shamil, and studied at Al- Azhar (i.e. in Cairo).In 2006, Atabiyev finished his studies at Al-Azhar and returned home to Karachay-Cherkessia, where according to KP he “did not prove to be a spiritual person but immediately began to make contacts with crooks and finally wound up with the crooks as a “legal” brother”. According to KP, Atabiyev was arrested. He cooperated with the investigation and “gave up his gang” (i.e. he informed on them). in 2010, Atabiyev was convicted by a Ust-Dzheguta court and sentenced to a year in a penal colony. (KP says that “many asked why Atabiyev got such a lenient sentence but people in the know were pointedly silent”. KP claims that Atabiyev was an informer, informing on “Murat Ristov’s gang”. (Ristov was killed in 2009 in a special operation against militants in Nalchik in Kabardino-Balkaria. A sambo champion, Ristov was a native of Karachay-Cherkessia and was known as an adherent of radical Islam). According to KP, Atabiyev acted as an informer not for ideological reasons but because he wanted to avoid spending a long time in prison. He did not quite manage this, however, as he was sentenced to the year in the penal colony. During that time, KP says, he became interested in jihad, and waging jihad in Karachay-Cherkessia. KP writes, “In essence, Atabiyev was the Karachay-Cherkessian analog of Israil Akhmednabiyev in Dagestan. However, he was largely ignored: the former do-nothing had no other experience except in bullshitting.” Atabiyev decided to leave Russia, since he had attracted the attention of the law enforcement agencies. At first he went to Turkey, but “he did not get on there, because Atabiyev had never worked”. At the end of 2011, Atabiyev crossed the border into Syria at Atma, “where the assembly point for Russian cannon fodder is now located.” From Atabiyev to Abu Jihad–Umar’s sidekick is born In Syria, Atabiyev found that people listened to his calls for jihad, which he now said should be waged right there, and not in the Caucasus. “Since Atabiyev was one of the few who had a theological education, he found his path — his calls for jihad were heard. The need for jihad was inexplicably been reoriented from Karachay-Cherkessia to Syria and Umar Shishani entrusted the newfound preacher with preaching propaganda on the internet to support his gang and fundraising efforts, and only in this was Atabiyev a true professional, because working with language is his only skill. Atabiyev did not participate in armed clashes because he did not know how. Well, actually he participated in detaching heads from people, there he undoubtedly looked a hero”. Abu Jihad, promoted to the “emir of Atma”, became famous in the Kavkazski Dom (“Caucasus House”), the group of fighters from the North Caucasus. However KP says, “it didn’t bother him that the Caucasus House was located in Syria or that it should be renamed the Caucasus Cemetery since almost everyone who came from Karachay-Cherkessia following Abu Jihad’s demagoguery has already been killed and buried like dogs in unmarked pits.” Yes, well. KP says that things have now started to go somewhat badly for Abu Jihad: the stream of new recruits from Karachay-Cherkessia has dried up, for example; and Abu Jihad has got a reputation as an “unpopular parasite” among some groups in Syria. As a result, KP says that Atabiyev/Abu Jihad has returned to his original idea of preaching about waging jihad in Karachay-Cherkessia, KP also claims that Atabiyev abandoned his original family in Karachay-Cherkessia and got married a second time, this time to a woman KP named as Evelena Grishina from Mozdok, but then he tried to persuade his first wife Svetlana and his grown daughter Saima and his son Amir to visit him in Syria for a week. However, Abu Jihad will not allow Svetlana and her children to go home. KP ends with this: “In fact, Syria is the only place where a mediocrity like Atabiyev is able, without any effort and doing nothing but making videos, to be considered a respected person. The sources of his wellbeing are payments from new arrivals, wire transfers from the Wahhabis and trained in junk stolen from Syria, allowing him and Shishani to open three stores in Turkey.”
Posted on: Sat, 06 Dec 2014 16:35:18 +0000
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