LONDON: A British-Egyptian man accused of fighting for Daesh has been found dead in prison.
Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, 32, was on trial in Madrid charged with numerous terrorist offenses and online fraud in order to raise money for the group. He was found dead in his cell on Wednesday at El Puerto de Santa Maria prison in Cadiz.
He was described by police as one of Daesh’s “most wanted foreign terrorist fighters” after a photograph emerged of him in Raqqa in 2014 holding the severed head of a Syrian regime soldier.
The image, posted on social media, was accompanied by the caption: “Chillin’ with my homie or what’s left of him.”
He was stripped of his UK citizenship after joining the group, and was at one stage believed to have been “Jihadi John,” a notorious British Daesh member wanted for the murder of several Western captives, later identified as Mohammed Emwazi.
Abdel Bary, a former rapper, was arrested in 2020 in Almeria, Spain, after leaving Syria in 2015.
He was accused of forming a terrorist cell with two Algerians, Abderrezak Siddiki and Kossaila Cholluah, who police said planned to “commit any type of action related to their terrorist militancy.”
Prison sources said the cause of death had yet to be established, but Abdel Bary’s body showed no signs of violence.
His family has been informed, and have requested a second independent autopsy in addition to that set to be conducted by Spanish authorities.
His father Adel Abdel Bary was jailed in 2015 in the US for 25 years for his part in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The attacks killed 224 people and wounded almost 5,000.
