Oct 31, 2015

Article Source: NYTimes - http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/31/w...ho-joined-isis-is-killed-by-us-airstrike.html

By CHRISTINE HAUSER | OCT. 30, 2015


Denis Cuspert, a former rapper from Germany, in Berlin in 2011. Credit: The New York Times

The German-born former rapper Deso Dogg, who abandoned his music career in 2010 and became a recruiter in Syria for the Islamic State, was killed in an airstrike this month, the Pentagon confirmed Friday.

The musician, born Denis Cuspert, toured with the American performer DMX in 2006 but later abandoned rap music and became a well-known singer of nasheeds, or Islamic devotional music, in German. The State Department designated him a terrorist in February after determining he had become a “willing pitchman” for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

“I can confirm that an Oct. 16 airstrike near Raqqah killed Denis Cuspert,” Elissa Smith, a Defense Department spokeswoman, said in an email on Friday. “Cuspert was a foreign terrorist fighter and operative for ISIL who used social media to take advantage of disaffected youth and potential Western recruits.”

Ms. Smith said Mr. Cuspert had “threatened the president of the United States and German citizens” and had encouraged other Western Muslims to carry out attacks on behalf of the Islamic State. “His death contributes to our efforts to stop foreign fighter recruitment,” she said.

(In Berlin, Tobias Plate, a spokesman for Germany’s Interior Ministry, could neither confirm nor deny the death.)

Mr. Cuspert was born in Berlin to a German mother and a Ghanaian father who soon left the family. His American stepfather, a former soldier, was a strict disciplinarian, and conflicts at home increased until Mr. Cuspert spent five years in a home for troubled children.

“I grew up with racism,” he told The New York Times in 2011.

He left Egypt in 2012, eventually making his way to Syria. In 2014, German officials said, he joined Islamic State fighters and swore allegiance to the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

In February, the State Department said that Mr. Cuspert was a “specially designated global terrorist.” It said Mr. Cuspert had joined the group in 2012, and had appeared in videos on its behalf, including one in which he appeared to be holding the severed head of a man he claimed had been executed for opposing the group.

The State Department said that, using his adopted Arabic name, Abu Talha al-Almani, the former rapper had tried to recruit other Germans to join.