A British computer hacker who became an Isis militant has been killed in a drone strike in Syria, other jihadists confirmed yesterday, despite initial claims from his British wife that he was still alive.
US officials first reported that Junaid Hussain, 21, from Birmingham, had been killed in a drone strike on Tuesday in the Isis-held city of Raqqa.
He is the 53rd British jihadist to die in Syria and Iraq, according to a database kept by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation.
US sources said Hussain was the second most wanted British Isis member after Mohammad Emwazi, the Isis executioner who has featured in numerous beheading videos. Hussain was third on a US list of Isis targets at the time of his death and was said to have had a significant role as an instigator and director of plots in Britain, Europe and the US.
Hussain was married to a British former punk rocker from Chatham, in Kent, named Sally Jones, 45. She converted to Islam and joined Isis after an online romance in 2014. The couple were dubbed “Mr and Mrs Terror”. There were claims that Jones had denied that her husband had been killed. However, several western Isis members later posted online tributes, using his jihadist name Abu Hussain al-Britani,and acknowledging his death.
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Hussain was believed to have been behind a jihadist computer hacking group calling itself the CyberCaliphate, which briefly took control of a Pentagon-owned Twitter account in January.
He was jailed for six months in 2012 over a computer hack that gained access to Tony Blair’s address book.