After losing son to Daesh, British mother vows to help others avoid the same tragedy

Updated 30 April 2018
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After losing son to Daesh, British mother vows to help others avoid the same tragedy

  • Nicola believes the safest solution to dealing with British foreign fighters is to encourage them to return home
  • She has since supported families from Europe, the UAE and the US who are dealing with the radicalization of a loved one

When her son died fighting for Daesh, British mother Nicola Benyahia channelled her grief into helping other families halt the radicalisation of loved ones. She vividly remembers how, telephoning from the battlefields of Syria, Rasheed sounded increasingly troubled.

The conviction that had driven the 19-year-old to leave his family in Birmingham, England, and take up arms for Daesh, seemed to be wavering. 

“You could tell he was beginning to see some grey areas,” his mother, Nicola, told Arab News.

The family wondered if he might be considering returning home, but weeks later received the call they had been dreading. This time an anonymous voice at the end of the telephone line said that Rasheed had died after being hit by shrapnel during a coalition drone strike across the border in Iraq.

The call came on Nov. 20, 2015, one week after Daesh militants killed 130 people during a series of horrific attacks across Paris. Shame mingled with grief as Nicola reeled from the shock. 

“The grieving process is very different,” she recalled. “There is no body, no funeral, no closure.” 

Rasheed’s transformation from a gregarious, athletic schoolboy brought up in one of England’s most diverse and vibrant cities to a volunteer for an extremist group known for carrying out public beheadings and crucifixions is a salutary lesson for parents across Europe and the Middle East.

Even with Daesh seemingly defeated in Iraq and Syria, the deceptively idealistic beliefs the extremist group espouses remain a potent threat to vulnerable young Muslim men and women. Nicola is determined that other mothers learn from her experience.

She told Arab News that looking back she can see clear warning signs that her son was being radicalized as he grew increasingly serious and withdrawn. “I was worried about him,” she said. 

Like many parents of teenagers, however, Nicola brushed his unusual behavior aside — a decision she now regrets.

Rasheed was among thousands of foreign fighters who joined Daesh in the aftermath of the 2011 Arab Spring. He arrived at the height of the group’s bloody campaign to preserve its self-proclaimed caliphate, which at its peak in 2014 spanned more than 66,000 square kilometers across Syria and Iraq.

Many of these militants are now expected to try to make their way home and European governments are divided over how best to deal with the potential threat they pose.

Months before his departure from the UK, Rasheed spent money he had saved from his electrical engineering apprenticeship on a diamond necklace for his mother. The accompanying note read: “Mama — no matter how much gold and how many precious stones are used, it’s never enough to show how precious you are to me.” 

Nicola believes that was the point Rasheed decided to go. He left Birmingham on a Friday at the end of May 2015, heading out of the family home in the early morning, apparently with routine plans to see friends later. Instead, he boarded a flight to Turkey before traveling to Syria.

On June 1, 2015, three days after he went missing, Rasheed sent his mother a text message. He was “safe” he said, and “in good hands.” 

But Nicola’s initial relief gave way to panic as she realized where he was. Rasheed told her he would be out of touch for 30 days and then his phone went dead. It was two excruciating months before they heard from him again.

Based on information she later received from a journalist in contact with Daesh fighters, Nicola found out that he spent those first two months — double the usual amount of time — in the extremist group’s training camps. 

“(The militants) said he looked ever so young and ever so lost, but he was very hard work, incredibly difficult to break,” she said.

In WhatsApp calls, Rasheed gave his mother sobering details of life as a Daesh recruit. He told Nicola that fighters were expected to buy their own own military clothing and ammunition, and had to make do with a wage equivalent to $57 a week, barely enough to live on. 

He also told her he had been introduced to a woman he was expected to marry, something that he was both nervous and excited about.

According to the Soufan Center, a US-based think tank, 850 Britons have gone to fight in Syria or Iraq. Of those, 425 are estimated to have returned to the UK. This compares with a total of 5,000 recruits who have gone to fight from the EU, 1,200 of whom are estimated to have returned to their home countries.

In the Middle East, Rasheed was given the nom de guerre Huraira Albritani, but his precise role in Daesh remains unclear. He was killed on Nov. 10, 2015 — 10 days before his family were notified — in Sinjar, northern Iraq, just before Kurdish forces backed by US air power wrested control of the area from the militants.

Exactly who carried out the drone strike is not known. However, Rasheed was not the first or the last British Daesh recruit to be killed in this way.

On Aug. 21, 2015, Reyyad Khan, a 21-year-old from Cardiff, Wales, and Ruhul Amin, a 26-year-old raised in Aberdeen, Scotland, died in a RAF drone strike on the Syrian city of Raqqa. Mohammed Emwazi, better known as the Daesh executioner “Jihadi John,” was killed in a drone strike in Raqqa two days after Rasheed.

In the months following her son’s death, Nicola, Rasheed’s father and their four daughters nursed their grief in private. “Your life has been shattered into 50 million pieces, so you try to make some sense of it,” she told Arab News.

A year later, however, Nicola decided to break her silence to help others avoid the same tragedy. Already a professional therapist, she trained under Daniel Koehler, director of the German Institute on Radicalization and De-radicalization Studies, and, in 2016, set up Families for Life, a Birmingham-based outreach group.

She has since supported families from Europe, the UAE and the US who are dealing with the radicalization of a loved one. Most, she told Arab News, have “no idea” what is going on until the damage is done. 

In one case, a mother was worried her son had begun to fast regularly — rationing his meals to one a day. Nicola warned her that it could be a sign he was preparing for the austere conditions he might face fighting for Daesh in the Middle East. She had witnessed similar changes in Rasheed, who went from loving free running — urban acrobatics where walls, bus shelters and park benches become gym apparatus — and doing handstands in the school corridor to becoming sullen and solitary.

Nicola converted to Islam in her late teens and later married an Algerian, but has always been relatively moderate in her beliefs. When Rasheed grew “more rigid” in his faith, Nicola attributed it to recent marital difficulties with her husband that had upset the family home. 

“I thought he was holding on to religion because it helped him find a way through, as it had me in the past,” she said.

Rasheed stopped attending their mosque and changed the way he dressed, once asking her to shorten his trouser legs in line with strict Salafi practice that seeks to mimic the clothing style of the Prophet Muhammad and his earliest followers. Rasheed also wanted to attend late-night Islamic study circles, but his mother refused to let him.

Nicola believes the safest solution to dealing with British foreign fighters is to encourage them to return home, where they can be rehabilitated and help to provide the government with further insight into how Daesh operates.

“Counter-terrorism learnt huge amounts from the information I was able to share with them from my son … if we don’t allow them back, we’re not going to access that data, which could be crucial,” she told Arab News.

Nicola never discovered who was responsible for recruiting her son, but the name of a likely suspect surfaces time and again during her work with other families. That person is still at large. The recruiters are clever, she said, because “they know how to fly just below the radar.”

It took weeks for Nicola to piece together the picture of Rasheed’s final months and much remains unknown, but she no longer dwells on these details. Instead, she hopes to use the lessons she has drawn from her son’s death to save the lives of other young men and women who may be tempted to follow in his footsteps.

“You can very easily spiral into negativity and grief, but I would be no good for anybody if I let that happen,” she said. “It would be almost like letting them win again.”


France responsible for ‘extreme violence’ in Cameroon independence war, report says

Updated 5 sec ago
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France responsible for ‘extreme violence’ in Cameroon independence war, report says

  • Between 1956 and 1961, France’s fight against Cameroonian independence claimed “tens of thousands of lives” and left hundreds of thousands displaced, the historians said
  • A 2021 report concluded France bore “overwhelming responsibilities” in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and a 2020 review examining France’s actions during Algeria’s war of independence called for a “truth commission” and other conciliatory actions

PARIS: France waged a war marked by “extreme violence” during Cameroon’s fight for independence in the late 1950s, historians said in the latest officially commissioned study grappling with Paris’s colonial past released on Tuesday.
The historians found that Paris implemented mass forced displacement, pushed hundreds of thousands of Cameroonians into internment camps and supported brutal militias to squash the central African country’s push for sovereignty.
The historical commission, whose creation was announced by President Emmanuel Macron during a 2022 trip to Yaounde, examined France’s role leading up to when Cameroon gained independence from France on January 1, 1960 and the following years.

History professor Emmanuel Tchumtchoua  poses for a portrait next to a martyrs' wall in the village of Bahouan, in Bafoussam, on January 25, 2025. (AFP)

Composed of both French and Cameroonian historians, the 14-person committee looked into France’s role in the country between 1945 and 1971 based on declassified archives, eyewitness accounts and field surveys.
Most of Cameroon came under French rule in 1918 after its previous colonial ruler, Germany, was defeated during World War I.
But a brutal conflict unfolded when the country began pushing for its independence following World War II, a move France violently repressed, according to the report’s findings.
Between 1956 and 1961, France’s fight against Cameroonian independence claimed “tens of thousands of lives” and left hundreds of thousands displaced, the historians said.
“It is undeniable that this violence was extreme because it violated human rights and the laws of war,” it said.
For many in France, the war in Cameroon went unnoticed because it mainly involved troops from colonies in Africa and was overshadowed by the French fight in Algeria’s 1954-1962 war of independence.
“But this invisibility should not create an illusion. France was indeed waging war in Cameroon,” the report said.
The formerly British Cameroons to the south gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1961 and became part of the newly independent state.

While the study aims to fill France’s “memory gap” on this period, for Cameroonians, “the profound trauma linked to repression remains,” it said.
The report comes as France has seen its influence wane among its former African colonies, which are reevaluating — and sometimes severing — their ties with Paris.
Even after Cameroon gained independence in 1960, Paris remained deeply involved in its governance, working closely with the “authoritarian and autocratic” regime of Ahmadou Ahidjo, who stayed in power until 1982.
France helped draft Cameroon’s post-independence constitution and defense agreements allowed French troops to “maintain order” in the newly independent state.
Ahidjo’s successor, current President Paul Biya, 91, in office since 1982, is only the second president in Cameroon’s history.
Receiving the report in Yaounde on Tuesday, Biya called it a “work of collective therapy” that would encourage the peoples of both countries to better accept their past relationship.
Ahead of its publication, former anti-colonial fighter Mathieu Njassep had told AFP he wanted France to admit to wrongdoing.
“If France does not recognize it was wrong, we won’t be able to forgive it,” said the 86-year-old who fought against Ahidjo’s government from 1960 and was thrown in jail for 14 years for “armed rebellion.”

Macron has taken tentative steps to come to terms with once-taboo aspects of the country’s historical record, though many argue he has not gone far enough.
A 2021 report concluded France bore “overwhelming responsibilities” in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and a 2020 review examining France’s actions during Algeria’s war of independence called for a “truth commission” and other conciliatory actions.
But Macron has ruled out an official apology for torture and other abuses carried out by French troops in Algeria.
France is now reconfiguring its military presence in Africa after being driven out of three countries in the Sahel governed by juntas hostile to Paris — Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
And Chad accused Macron of showing contempt after he said African leaders had “forgotten to say thank you” to France for helping to combat jihadist insurgencies in the Sahel.
Last week Macron said he was committed to “continuing the work of remembrance and truth initiated with Cameroon” after receiving the report.
 

 


Zelensky says Putin ‘afraid’ of negotiations on ending Ukraine war

Updated 48 min 27 sec ago
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Zelensky says Putin ‘afraid’ of negotiations on ending Ukraine war

Kyiv: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday that Vladimir Putin was “afraid” of negotiations on ending the Ukraine war, after the Russian president ruled out direct talks with his Ukrainian counterpart.
“Today, Putin once again confirmed that he is afraid of negotiations, afraid of strong leaders, and does everything possible to prolong the war,” Zelensky posted on X.

Americans sour on some of Trump’s early moves, poll finds

Updated 53 min 39 sec ago
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Americans sour on some of Trump’s early moves, poll finds

  • Poll shows mixed approval for Trump’s early executive orders
  • Support for Trump’s immigration and hiring freeze policies remains strong

WASHINGTON: Americans have a dim view of some of President Donald Trump’s early barrage of executive orders, including his attempt to do away with so-called birthright citizenship and his decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.
Since taking office on Jan. 20, the Republican president has moved quickly to crack down on immigration and scale back the size of government, efforts that respondents to the three-day poll that closed on Sunday look on more favorably.
Overall, the poll showed 45 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s performance as president, down slightly from 47 percent in a Jan. 20-21 poll. The share who disapproved was slightly larger at 46 percent, an increase from 39 percent in the prior poll.
The poll had a margin of error of about 4 percentage points.
“While it does seem Trump is getting a honeymoon to some extent, his numbers are still not impressive by historical standards,” said Kyle Kondik, an analyst with the University of Virginia Center for Politics. During Trump’s first term, his approval rating hit as high as 49 percent during his first weeks in office but he closed out his term at 34 percent approval following the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the US Capitol.
It may be too early to evaluate whether Trump is squandering his political capital by focusing on issues where he is not aligned with the public, Kondik said. But the poll shows that many of his early actions have been greeted warmly only by his hardcore base of supporters.
Voters more generally remain deeply concerned about the high price of food, housing and other necessities, the poll found.
Most Americans opposed ending the nation’s longstanding practice of granting citizenship to children born in the US even if neither parent has legal immigration status, the poll found. Some 59 percent of respondents — including 89 percent of Democrats and 36 percent of Republicans — said they opposed ending birthright citizenship. A federal judge last week temporarily blocked the Trump administration from making changes to birthright citizenship, but the White House has vowed to fight on.

Little support for ‘Gulf of America’

Seventy percent of respondents oppose renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, an action Trump ordered on his first day in office. Only 25 percent of respondents supported the idea, with the rest unsure.
Some 59 percent of respondents, including 30 percent of Republicans, opposed Trump’s moves to end federal efforts to promote the hiring of women and members of racial minority groups. When asked specifically about Trump’s order to close all federal diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, offices, respondents were more evenly divided, with 51 percent opposed and 44 percent in favor, largely along partisan lines.
Support for expanding fossil fuel drilling — another early policy change in the new administration — was highly concentrated in Trump’s party, with 76 percent of Republicans backing the easing of drilling restrictions and 81 percent of Democrats opposing it. Some 59 percent of respondents said they opposed the United States pulling out of the Paris climate accords.
Public views also split along partisan lines for billionaire businessman Elon Musk, one of Trump’s most prominent allies. While 75 percent of Republicans in the survey said they had a favorable view of Musk, 90 percent of Democrats said they had an unfavorable view.
One possible source of concern for Trump’s political team could be the still overwhelming sense that rising prices remain untamed. Some 50 percent of poll respondents said the country was on the wrong track when it came to the cost of living, compared to 25 percent who said it was moving in the right direction. The rest said they weren’t sure or didn’t answer the question.

Support on immigration, hiring freeze
There were positive indicators for Trump, as well. Some 48 percent Americans approve of Trump’s approach on immigration, compared to 41 percent who disapprove. And the poll showed Trump having significant levels of support on the hiring freeze he ordered at most federal offices, with 49 percent of respondents backing a freeze, including 80 percent of Republicans and 43 percent of Democrats.
Kondik said that Trump ultimately may be judged by the public on big-picture issues such as the economy and immigration and that opposition to smaller-scale policy measures may not be damaging.
“Trump was elected in large part because voters tended to side with him on the economy and immigration. To the extent he is viewed as doing positive things on that, it’s probably good for him,” Kondik said.
But, he added, if voters in the coming months perceive Trump’s immigration crackdown or his government downsizing efforts to be overly harsh, that could change.
Trump won’t be on the ballot again, but the backlash could be felt by congressional Republicans running for re-election next year, he said.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll, which was conducted online and nationwide over Jan. 24-26, surveyed 1,034 adults.


Israeli PM says Trump has invited him to the White House on Feb. 4

Updated 28 January 2025
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Israeli PM says Trump has invited him to the White House on Feb. 4

  • Trump teased the upcoming visit in a conversation with reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday, but didn’t provide details
  • “I’m going to be speaking with Bibi Netanyahu in the not too distant future,” he said

WADI GAZA: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that President Donald Trump has invited him to visit the White House on Feb. 4, which would make him the first foreign leader to do so in Trump’s second term.
The announcement came as the United States pressures Israel and Hamas to continue a ceasefire that has paused a devastating 15-month war in Gaza. Talks about the ceasefire’s more difficult second phase, which aims to end the war, are set to begin on Feb. 3.
There was no immediate comment from the White House. Trump teased the upcoming visit in a conversation with reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday, but didn’t provide details. “I’m going to be speaking with Bibi Netanyahu in the not too distant future,” he said.
The meeting would be a chance for Netanyahu, under pressure at home, to remind the world of the support he has received from Trump over the years, and to defend Israel’s conduct of the war. Last year, the two men met face-to-face for the first time in nearly four years at Trump’s Florida Mar-a-Lago estate.
Israel is the largest recipient of US military aid, and Netanyahu is likely to encourage Trump not to hold up some weapons deliveries the way the Biden administration did, though it continued other deliveries and overall military support.
Even before taking office this month, Trump was sending his special Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, to the region to apply pressure along with the Biden administration to get the current Gaza ceasefire achieved.
But Netanyahu has vowed to renew the war if Hamas doesn’t meet his demands in negotiations over the ceasefire’s second phase of the ceasefire, meant to discuss a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a “sustainable calm.”
Under the deal, more than 375,000 Palestinians have crossed into northern Gaza since Israel allowed their return on Monday morning, the United Nations said Tuesday. That represents over a third of the million people who fled in the war’s opening days.
Many of the Palestinians trudging along a seaside road or crossing in vehicles after security inspections were getting their first view of shattered northern Gaza under the fragile ceasefire, now in its second week.
They were determined, if homes were damaged or destroyed, to pitch makeshift shelters or sleep outdoors amid the vast piles of broken concrete or perilously leaning buildings. After months of crowding in squalid tent camps or former schools in Gaza’s south, they would finally be home.
“It’s still better for us to be on our land than to live on a land that’s not yours,” said Fayza Al-Nahal as she prepared to leave the southern city of Khan Younis for the north.
At least two Palestinians set off for the north by sea, crowding into a rowboat with a bicycle and other belongings.
Hani Al-Shanti, displaced from Gaza City, looked forward to feeling at peace in whatever he found, “even if it is a roof and walls without furniture, even if it is without a roof.” One newly returned woman hung laundry in the ruins of her home, its walls blown out.
Under the ceasefire, the next release of hostages held in Gaza, and Palestinian prisoners from Israeli custody, is set to occur on Thursday, followed by another exchange on Saturday.


Putin says there is a way to organize talks with Ukraine, but Kyiv not willing

Russian President Vladimir Putin. (File/Reuters)
Updated 28 January 2025
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Putin says there is a way to organize talks with Ukraine, but Kyiv not willing

  • “Essentially, if they want to proceed, there is a legal way to do it. Let the chairman of the Rada handle it in accordance with the constitution,” Putin said

MOSCOW: Ukraine could find a legal way to hold peace talks with Russia on ending their nearly three-year-old war, but Moscow sees no willingness on Kyiv’s part to engage, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday.
Putin told Russian state television that negotiations with Ukraine were complicated by President Volodymyr Zelensky’s “illegitimacy” in remaining in power beyond his mandate with no authority to sign documents.

“But essentially, if they want to proceed, there is a legal way to do it. Let the chairman of the Rada (Ukraine’s parliament) handle it in accordance with the constitution,” Putin told top Kremlin reporter Pavel Zarubin.
“If there is a desire, we can resolve any legal issues. However, so far, we simply do not see such a desire.”

If Ukraine showed a desire to negotiate and seek compromises, Putin said, “let anyone suitable lead those talks. We will naturally secure what meets our interests.
“But in terms of signing documents, everything has to be done in a way that legal experts confirm the legitimacy of those who are authorized by the Ukrainian state to sign these agreements.”

Russia has long alleged that Zelensky no longer has legal authority as his term in office ran out in May 2024 and no presidential election has since been held.
Ukraine’s constitution empowers the speaker of parliament to act if the president is unable to do so.
But Ukrainian authorities say Zelensky remains the legitimate president on grounds that martial law has been in effect since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. They say wartime conditions do not allow for an election to be held.
In his comments, Putin said that if Ukraine’s Western allies backed the notion of talks it would be simple to find a legal way to proceed with them. Putin said he had sent “an appropriate signal” to this effect to former President Joe Biden.
In addition, Putin said, a legal means could be found to rescind a 2022 Ukrainian presidential decree that Moscow says barred any talks with the Russian leadership.
Zelensky said last week that the decree, signed after Russia unilaterally annexed four Ukrainian regions, only barred negotiations with Ukrainian groups outside his authority and was aimed at blocking talks with separatists.