There are drastic career changes.
And then there’s the sinister “Sid” — a Londoner who’s believed to be the new Jihadi John-like masked terrorist in the latest ISIS (Islamic State, ISIL, IS, Daesh, etc.) video capturing the death of five men accused of being “Western spies”.
According to numerous news sources, Sid is a man who used to sell inflatable bouncy castles (shown above) for children in the United Kingdom.
Here he is (reportedly) back in 2001, in front of the U.S. Embassy in London, protesting (via Reuters):
And here he is (also reportedly) all thugged out in a video distributed through social media on Monday (also via Reuters):
The man’s full name is Siddhartha Dhar. He left the UK and trekked illegally to Syria while on bail after his arrest for “suspicion of belonging to a banned group and encouraging terrorism”.
In the video, there’s also a cameo of a young child, a four-year-old boy, decked out in ISIS-like attire, threatening the screen and saying “kill the kaffir over there”. Which means “kill the unbelievers”.
He’s actually, according to his grandfather Sunday Dare, a kid named Isa. He says he was taken to Syria by his mother after they converted to Islam — after being devout Catholic.
This from Reuters:
Dhar, who is also known as Abu Rumaysah, is one of Britain’s most high-profile Islamists and an associate of Anjem Choudary, Britain’s best-known Islamist preacher who is due to go on trial next week accused of terrorism offences.
A convert from Hinduism who lived in east London, Dhar regularly attended protests staged by the now banned organization al-Muhajiroun and had often spoken to the media in support of radical Islamic causes.
Since leaving Britain he gained further attention through online videos in which he exhorted life under Islamic State.