An Australian schoolboy who travelled to the Middle East to join Islamic State militants is believed to have been killed while launching a suicide bomb attack in Iraq.
Images posted on the internet show the teenager at the wheel of a battered 4WD vehicle moments before it blew up in Ramadi on Wednesday. A Twitter account associated with Isis tweeted a photograph of him with the caption: “For today’s Martyrs.”
An Australian newspaper which identified the youth this week as Jake Bilardi, an 18-year-old from Melbourne who dropped out of school last year, said that it had not been able to independently confirm information about his death.
The Melbourne Age reported today that a blog had been unearthed in which Bilardi detailed plans to carry out deadly attacks in Melbourne and ultimately volunteer for martyrdom in Iraq.
Bilardi’s blog, written on January 15 and discovered after his apparent death on Wednesday, lays out how he became disillusioned with western society and fascinated by Islam. The blog has since been deleted.
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Written under his adopted name, Abu Abdullah al-Australi, and entitled From Melbourne to Ramadi: My Journey, the manifesto also predicted his death, saying that he was writing it as he waited in the central Iraqi town to die.
“With my martyrdom operation drawing closer, I want to tell you my story, how I came from being an atheist school student in affluent Melbourne to a soldier of the Khilafah preparing to sacrifice my life for Islam in Ramadi, Iraq,” he wrote.
“And that is where I sit today, waiting for my turn to stand before Allah (azza wa’jal) and dreaming of sitting amongst the best of His creation.”
The impression is backed up by an interview he did with a BBC reporter, in which Bilardi said after his arrival in Iraq: “I came here chasing death, I might as well kill as many kuffar (infidels) as I can.”
Isis had touted the recruitment of the young westerner as a coup and much of the British media, believing he was from the United Kingdom, referred to him as “Britain’s white jihadi”.
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Bilardi’s 4,400-word manifesto confirms that he radicalised himself by reading news sites from around the world. It does not mention either of the two north suburban Melbourne mosques that he attended, nor his mother, who died in 2009 when he was about 12. Her death changed him, other family members have said. His Melbourne aunt told Fairfax Media that she believed her nephew turned to Islam after she died.
Instead, he credits his unnamed older brother for introducing him to international politics, saying that the first time he heard the words “al-Qaeda” and “Osama bin Laden”, they “came from his mouth”.
“But as I know he is unhappy with me being here, I can confirm for his sake that, no, he did not ‘radicalise’ me,” Bilardi wrote.
The most disturbing part for many Australians will be that, frustrated at a failed first attempt to travel to Syria or Iraq, Bilardi began making plans to attack Melbourne.
“Fearing possible attempts by the increasingly-intrusive authorities in Australia to prevent my departure I began drawing up a Plan B. This plan involved launching a string of bombings across Melbourne, targeting foreign consulates and political/military targets as well as grenade and knife attacks on shopping centres and cafes and culminating with myself detonating a belt of explosives amongst the kuffar,” he wrote.
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A close school friend from Melbourne who did not want to be identified told the Melbourne Age that as a schoolboy Bilardi had “self-radicalised over the internet “, driven by his hatred of the media and governments of western countries. He said he was not surprised Bilardi had became a fighter for the radical Islamic group.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that Bilardi’s family had discovered a number of improvised explosive devices at their home after his departure for the Middle East. The family, believed to be of Italian background, alerted the authorities, who began tracking Bilardi’s movements overseas.
Tony Abbott, the prime minister, said he had been told of unconfirmed reports of Bilardi’s involvement in a suicide bombing.
“This is a horrific situation, an absolutely horrific situation, and it shows the lure ... of this death cult to impressionable youngsters,” he said.
“It’s very, very important that we do everything we can to try to safeguard our young people against the lure of this shocking, alien and extreme ideology.”
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Iraqi officials have confirmed that a series of co-ordinated car bomb attacks were launched on Ramadi, about 90km west of Baghdad, overnight.
Reuters reported that 13 suicide car bombs were detonated, while The New York Times reported that as many as 21 were carried out in the group’s fiercest assaults in months.
Hikmat Suleiman, a political adviser to the governor of Anbar, told the paper that Iraqi forces in Ramadi were able to keep casualties to a minimum by attacking and thwarting the suicide bombers as they approached the city.
The Iraqi forces blew up most of the vehicles before they reached their apparent targets, he said.