British officials from MI5 and MI6 have identified a former Rapper from London as the man behind the mask who brutally murdered journalist James Foley last week, in a video that was posted to YouTube by ISIS.
The man, Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, left a music career and moved from London to Syria two years ago to fight alongside Islamic militants. The Independent gathered lyrics from Bary's songs and documented the changes from his rapping about marijuana, to rapping about deportation and anger at the arrest of his father. "It's hard to progress in the future with a damaged past, but still I try to count my blessings and I thank Allah," lyrics from 2012 say. "I'm trying to change my ways, but there's blood on my hands and I can't change my ways until there's funds in the bank."
Bary went by the rap alias Lyricist Jinn or L Jinny, and is allegedly seen here in a video from SwashTV:
"Give me the pride and the honor like my father, I swear the day they came and took my dad, I could have killed a cop or two," he says. "Violate my brothers and I'm filling you with lead."
For their part, U.S. officials haven't confirmed that Bary is the person in Foley's beheading video. "We're not in a position to say exactly who the man in the video is yet, but we are actively working with our British counterparts to determine that every day," Marie Harf, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, told USA Today. "There are a variety of ways to do this, and we're putting the full force of our resources behind that effort now." The question is also raised as why Bary would keep him unidentified in this video just after he was proudly showing off a severed on social media.
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Bary's father, Adel Abdul Bary, was extradited from the U.K. in 2012 after he was accused of helping al-Qaeda in the 1998 attacks of two American embassies in South Africa. He was also considered one of Osama Bin Laden's closest advisors.
