Supporters of President Assad in Syria have circulated false reports of the death of a British jihadist fighting for Islamic State, in what experts said was an attempt to drum up pity and deflect attention from the regime’s war crimes.
Pro-Assad media outlets published the name and photograph of William Hassmou Kaleenak, claiming that he was one of two Islamic State (Isis) field commanders killed in Deir ez-Zor.
The image in fact showed a Chechen fighter called Bakr al-Gharib, according to a Google+ page carrying it.
Experts said that Assad’s supporters are trying to tap into western outrage at homegrown jihadists’ involvement in beheadings and massacres, after seeing its effectiveness as a propaganda tool.
Charlie Winter, of the anti-extremism Quilliam Foundation, said that pro-Assad outlets were trying to capitalise on the world’s horror at the foreign fighter phenomenon and at the rise of Isis.
Advertisement
“I think it’s an attempt to say, ‘Listen, we are fighting on the same side as the coalition, we are fighting a fight that’s more important than our own people.’
“It’s a cheap trick, but in the skewed world in which Assad lives the best way is to make his fight against Islamic State ours. It distracts people from what he is still doing to his people.”
An Arabic media outlet called Only God, Syria and Bashar [Assad] put out the image of the supposed British fighter, saying that he went by the name Abu Abdullah.
Soon after, the pro-regime al-Masdar News put out a supporting story without the image. “His British passport was discovered among his possessions,” read the report, published on Monday.
The photograph, however, is thought to have come originally from a set celebrating Mujahideen in the second Chechen War. The image and name were quickly picked up by western media and connected in error to Abu Abdullah al-Britani, a British fighter with suspected links to the jailers holding and decapitating western hostages in Raqqa, northern Syria.
Advertisement
Sources close to Isis said that the deaths in Deir ez-Zor had not been confirmed. One source, who fought in Chechnya and is now affiliated with Isis, said he did not recognise the name or image from either conflict.
Last month, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said there was “compelling evidence” that chlorine gas had been used in an attack by regime forces on the village of Kafr Zeta, north of Homs.
It emerged this week that the US State Department was planning to end funding for the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, which is working to gather evidence of war crimes by Assad. Syrian officials have always denied the use of chemical weapons.