Edgar
aged 31
He was the first to travel from London to Syria sometime over 2012 or 2013. Brainy, intelligent and not one to take leading roles, he has never posted any of his photos onto social networks nor has he engaged in any type of Islamic State propaganda on Facebook or on Twitter contrary to the case of the majority of Western jihadists. In April 2014, when Expresso began writing about the Portuguese presence in Islamic State, his name was the first put forward by sources close to the European information services:
“He’s called Edgar and is the leader of a Portuguese group fighting in Aleppo, in Syria, against the Bashar al-Assad regime”.
Edgar is no second generation immigrant nor did he gain his Portuguese passport through some marriage of convenience as initially suggested (when it was still difficult to grasp that there might be Portuguese jihadists). The son of parents who returned from Cape Verde in the late 1970s – his mother worked for the Portuguese Air Force -, was born and raised in Portugal, in the suburbs of Lisbon, halfway to Sintra. His home, a 9th floor flat, where he lived with his parents, brothers and sisters, is located within a recently built neighbourhood of tall buildings. He would walk to school where he was a dedicated student and also played amateur level football with his younger brother Celso at a local club. Football, indeed, represents the common bond between the five jihadists. They played in Portugal and continued to play in London.
Edgar graduated in management and accounting from the University of Oporto and, about a decade ago, decided to proceed with his studies in the United Kingdom at the University of East London. Expresso was told by the media relations office of this higher education establishment that they would neither confirm nor deny that the Portuguese had studied there: “our policy is not to comment on matters that may be related to our students or members of staff”, read the university’s e-mail sent response.
He went to live in Leyton, in the suburbs of the capital, in a low rent area but sufficiently close to the capital’s centre and where there is a growing number of Portuguese citizens, some also recent converts to Islam. Edgar joined this latter group, beginning to attend the Forest Gate mosque and, shortly after that, he had chosen his path in life: Islam, in its most radical facet.
“They sign up to Jihad not out of despair or being unemployed but rather out of a question of faith. They went up through the levels of Islam”, was how one of the brother’s relatives explained it to Expresso in April after having watched the entire process; from the first contact with the religion to the departure for Syria.
Still in London, Edgar went from recruited to recruiter, trying to pull in Portuguese speakers to the cause via Facebook chats. He chose his targets, always young whether male or female, from Portuguese Muslim groups. He always began his chats in the same way: “How is your Islam going?”
A lad aged 20, Portuguese, took the bait. “He told me that he had a group in London and asked if I wanted to take a course on Islam to go to Morocco and Mauritania. Afterwards, he might be able to go to a country such as Syria”, he told Expresso. Alarmed, he triggered a warning in that same forum. Edgar then fled from the Internet. His mission changed: from recruiter to guerrilla fighter. In late 2012, he travelled to Turkey by plane and then walked on foot and by car over the border to northern Syria. There, he enlisted in Islamic State. He is still there.
Celso
aged 28
By far the most famous Portuguese guerrilla fighter in the service of the Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi led army. In April, he put a video up on YouTube, with his face covered and AK-47 in his hand, under his fighting alias of Abu Issa Al-Andaluzi. Speaking in English, he appealed to Muslims to take up Jihad in Greater Syria. His accent immediately gave away his Portuguese origins. Shortly afterwards, through recourse to facial recognition software, the British and Portuguese secret services were able to identify the speaker as Celso Costa.
The video went viral not due to the message of Celso but rather for the introduction: there, he said he was a former football player, at Arsenal in London and that he had turned his back on football, money and the European way of life to follow the path of Allah. In his country of origin, he might even have grown up with Cristiano Ronaldo, one of the best players in the world. Before the secret services revealed his true identity, there was speculation that the man behind the scarf might be the Portuguese player Luís Boa Morte or Lassana Diarra, a French footballer of Malian descent and both former Arsenal players.
The truth lies far distant. Celso, 28 years of age, was no professional footballer. But he had some skill. Along with his brother Edgar, he also set off for London with the objective of studying and getting a good job. However, what he really liked were martial arts and the football matches played on Wednesdays in Stratford or Canning Town, also in the eastern reaches of the city, along with his Portuguese and African friends. One day, he decided to try his luck at Arsenal. He went to a few open training sessions but ended up not being selected. That began and finished his connections with the London club.
With the football on hold, there was more time to listen to the sermons of the Islamic leaders in his Leyton neighbourhood and in the faculty. His friends from youth and those he made in London all agreed that Celso was a priority target to win over for the jihadist cause. His charismatic and expansive style made him a natural recruiter of guerrilla fighters for Syria and Iraq. Thus did it prove. “In minutes, he had gathered a group around him with his easy and cheerful talk”, said one friend. “He was a funny person who found it easy to make friends and had a great power of persuasion over other young and not very mentally strong persons”, added another.
He had been like this in Portugal. Celso was a cool lad, without any rules, a great fan of night-life, breakdancing and pretty girls. He liked being different, standing out, being at the centre of attention. “When he told me he was about to convert to Islam, I thought this was just another of his jokes. When I realised that he was serious, I was even rather content. Perhaps this would help him find the right path as he had certainly been having some difficulty in finding it. But he was totally brainwashed. Bit by bit, he got ever more fanatical. It was shocking. I begin to feel tears forming when I think about him because I know just what end awaits him. It really is a shock to see such a transformation”, a friend from the Lisbon-Sintra line explained.
Fábio
aged 22
Fábio was never into studying. His dreams were always distant from the schools desks and the academic way of life. The talents that interested him and that he nurtured came out of his feet and his hands: his feet ensured he was a skilful footballer and a sharp striker; his hands revealed an artist with a taste for architecture, praised by teachers and colleagues alike. He played for various neighbourhood clubs on the Lisbon-Sintra line but never stayed very long in any of them. He was a rebel, non-conformist and impatient. He always wanted more.
He grew up in Mem Martins, one the outskirts of Lisbon, but this Sintra council soon grew too small for somebody wanting to be both Cristiano Ronaldo and Siza Vieira, or at least one of them. Aged 19, he set off for the United Kingdom to study art and to play. London was the stage for every opportunity. He became a dream-chaser, hunting his dreams but in the end it was he who got caught in the jihadist network and ended up in Syria.
In two years, he converted to Islam, changed his name to Abdu, went radical and set off for Syria. The chronology of this period was put together from the accounts of friends and family members who talked with Expresso. Nobody wanted to be identified. And this begins in the flat in which he rented a room in the neighbourhood of Leyton and concentrates around the Muay Tai ring in the gym of a charity organisation that seeks to integrate young persons through martial arts. Fábio did not have a job and only played football for amateur clubs for experience. Thus, he spent a great deal of time there.
Between the neighbourhood, the faculty and the gym, a new group of friends emerged: Celso, Edgar, Nero and Sandro. Like him, they had grown up on the Lisbon-Sintra line and just a few kilometres from each other. Like him, they had roots in Angola. Older and with more experience of London, they became his reference point. Contrary to him, they were Muslims but that difference was soon to vanish.
Fábio moved in with them, began calling them brothers, began reading the Koran. From them, he received companionship, support, food and even money. And, very quickly, he also began talking about converting to Islam. The football was not working out. He did recruitment sessions at various clubs and even joined a British amateur club with a reputation as a talent spotter but it did not work out. Going back to Portugal was not an option. Recruiting him for Jihad was simply the next step. “The rebellious kid had become a radical kid”, regretted one of those once close to Fábio.
He arrived in Syria in October 2013 and received a month of military training before joining the Al Ansar wa Muhajireen brigade (made up of western fighters from countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Sweden, Belgium and Germany), which went onto join Islamic State.
On Facebook, he religiously documents the events making up the days in his new life. Abdu appears with his face uncovered, smiling, armed and with the black and white flag of Islamic State appearing in almost every photograph. In April, Expresso was able to talk to him through the chat mode on that social network. Questioned about his decision to fight in Syria, he responded:
“As from the moment that you accept Islam, you follow the designs of Allah. Hence, you understand that there was no reason for not coming”.
Around this time, a video was posted to YouTube in which Celso (Abu Issa Al Andaluzi) appears along with another mujahedeen, of Malay origin, in the river Euphrates, during a pause in the fighting.
On the day of this filming, Fábio was in Aleppo. In recent months in 2014, he has been fighting in Raqqa with sporadic missions in Iraq. He filmed the most shared video of the taking of Mosul on 12th June.
Patrício
aged 28
Of all the Portuguese jihadists, he has been the most sought after by the European secret services and by Interpol due to the high risk of his engaging in acts of terrorism. The objective: to detect and prevent his free return to Europe.
“He has an important position, influential inside the organisation and is far from being a foot soldier that went to fight and die in Syria”
This was guaranteed to Expresso by different sources in the Portuguese security services. The family confirms the high ranking of this Portuguese citizen who was born in Benguela, raised in Lisbon, studied in Aveiro, did an engineering degree in Porto and a specialist diploma in oil in London.
He has been in Syria since October 2012, in the Aleppo region, near the border with Turkey. He became a mujahedeen, a warrior serving the cause of Islam. At the beginning of 2014, his name appeared directly linked to a failed attack by the Al-Shabaab group, with ties to Al-Qaeda, in Tanzania: Patrício was the connecting link that, from Syria, would supply weaponry, money and specialist strategical knowledge.
“He was always an obedient and intelligent son, a sweet boy who did not cause us any trouble, dedicated to his studies, he never went off the tracks or got violent. This really was a heavy blow to us... it still is. We are a destroyed family. In our prayers, we beg for his return”, tells his father, José.
All the family is Catholic and very regular churchgoers. Patrício was baptised, put into a crèche run by nuns. When aged three, his mother and older sister abandoned Benguela and they all set off for Portugal. The civil war in Angola gave no guarantees for their safety.
Telling his story of conversion and radicalisation involves practically repeating the history of Fábio step by step: he first came into contact with Islam in London, where he had emigrated to continue with his engineering studies that he began in Oporto; he went to live in the Leyton neighbourhood; met the brothers Celso and Edgar there and they took him down the Jihad path. The proof of the connection exists in writing: in Portugal, the address of the young engineer was the same as the two brothers even though he never actually lived there a secret service source guaranteed us.
Patrício converted in 2011, aged 25. His curriculum made him a particularly attractive recruit, an engineering graduate, specialist in petroleum – the 'black gold' that finances the Islamic State army –, a sportsman and former martial arts students and even knowing some Arabic that he had learned when doing an internship in Dubai.
On his personal Facebook page, he uses his true name and very much an exception among the guerrilla fighters. In 24 months in Syria, the Portuguese convert has been on the frontline, fought in the taking of the air base in Aleppo, has become a recruiter and a scholar of Islam. He simultaneously serves as a guerrilla fighter and professor. And he is a husband and father: he married an Australian, has four children with different women. Around March, there was a pause in his Facebook postings coinciding with a report advanced by Expresso from a secret service source: Patrício had been wounded in the legs and quite seriously. Two months later, he is back online. However, the new photos do not show any combat. He is far from the frontline.
“One day, I asked him: ‘And what if the worst happens?’”, asked his father. The response totally disarmed him: “One day, you shall receive a message from a brother. Do not be sad at my death”.
Sandro 'Funa'
aged 36
He was the last of the Leyton group to join the Islamic State ranks. The 36 year old Portuguese citizen travelled to Syria in January 2014, following the same route as his colleagues through Turkey. Another boy from the Lisbon-Sintra line, he grew up in Monte Abraão, between Massamá and Queluz.
He was “o Funa” to his friends and family. Born in Cape Verde, Sandro was a schoolmate of Edgar and Celso in a secondary school very close to his home. The three grew up like brothers together and sharing the same pleasures such as football.
In 2007, he decided to abandon the country and become an emigrant in the United Kingdom, where he met Fábio and Patrício. He wanted a land with more labour opportunities. However, his life gained more than just an employment contract: in eight years, he entered into contact with the Muslim faith, converted and became radicalised. He had been raised in a practising Catholic household.
In Syria, he followed the same philosophy as Edgar and did not take to broadcasting Islamic State propaganda through the social networks.
“His family knew that he was now fighting for the Islamic State along with all of the others”, a friend affirmed.
At the beginning of November 2014, family and friends received the news they most feared. Sandro had died in Kobane, towards the end of October, under heavy fire from coalition fighter planes. Portuguese Islamic State guerrilla fighters are believed to have told the families via the social networks. Expresso has also had this report informally confirmed by the secret services.
However, the Portuguese state hesitates in officially recognising the death of ‘Funa’ given that more concrete details are needed from the Middle East. And, in the Caliphate, information and counter-information go hand in hand with the only objective of misleading the Western authorities.
Lastly, for the ‘Funa’ family, there is little option but to mourn at a distance and hope that one day his remains may one day be returned to Portugal.