Thursday, February 4, 2016

The Turkish connection in the video of an arrested Germany based IS sympathizer

The Washington based Middle East Media Research Institute TV Monitor Project collects and translates clips from the region and elsewhere and recently added clip #5290 - Frankfurt-Based Syrian Activist Dr. M. F: "This Is Why I Support the Islamic State".

German police arrested the man, a postgraduate student at the Darmstadt technical university on 2 Feb 2016.  The article explains that the shortened video had been posted on the Facebook page of a German politician the previous Sunday and that many callers had contacted the university after the weekend.

Facebook deleted M.F.'s account, so we cannot see the history, but his Twitter account is still up. The article reporting his arrest mentions that the university had no previous indication of his sympathies for IS/Daesh.

Missing from the article is any mention of possible indications the German authorities might have had. The Twitter account, dormant for two years, saw its first tweet in early July 2015, and this tweet clearly expresses sympathies for IS.
While there was not much activity on the Twitter account, with fewer than 50 tweets until the February 2016 arrest, they were all very unambiguously pro IS.

The MEMRI video is about 8 out of the 52 minutes of the original video (on YouTube). Sitting behind a desk, with a laptop and a glass of water as well as a script in front of him, the young man has a clear statement: Let me explain why I support the Islamic State.

A book shelf behind him indicates that he is in a room that appears to be an office of an entity related to Turkey. There are two small flags on the bookshelf, one a flag of Turkey, the other a corporate flag with a fairly modern looking logo and a text that appears to end in "group". This may or may not be his place of work, assuming that the grant he received from the Syrian government ended in 2011 as reported in the article, and he needed to earn money.

The edges of the book shelf, the contents, as well as the chair seem to indicate that the video was not recorded in Germany. Unless we are looking at a very conservative Turkish business in Germany.

In the video, F. blames the U.S. for allegedly trying to destroy the Sunni Muslims of Syria and Iraq in cooperation with local helpers and launches into an all out Sharia-based "explanation" of IS with gory details of killings.

F.'s demeanor is rather calm and focused on the camera, with very few glances to the sides, once to the computer on his right, later to the left and up. It is not clear if someone else was in the room during the taping, although his body language can be read as supporting this hypothesis.

The blogster would really like to know what the Turkish connection in the video is. So, here is a partial screenshot of the bookshelf with the flags and some other interesting items.

Get in touch if you have any information on these items:



[Update 2/6/2016]
Found a Facebook account after going through all links on the still active Twitter account].
The full length YouTube video has been removed.

No comments:

Post a Comment