Explosions, booby traps, the screams of the fallen, the shots of soldiers. The university-work-football-mosque routine of Leyton must seem a lifetime away. Each day spent on the battlefields of Raqqa, Aleppo or Mosul is another day spent defying death. Sandro ‘Funa’ was the first to fall in October 2014.

Of the London five, Patrício has spent the longest battling through the lands of the Caliphate. In Syria, several months ago, he joined a group of foreign mujahedeen, the majority of Swedish and British backgrounds, who were gaining ground against the army of Bashar al-Assad and with much blood on their hands.

The atrocities told of by victims and witnesses include executions and amputations in the public square for anybody disobeying sharia or the rape of women from ethnic minorities who refuse the orders of the soldiers commanded by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Many of these mujahedeen are in their early twenties but are already veterans of the war in Iraq with a correspondingly complete curriculum of hostage taking, torture and murder.

To deepen the climate of fear and terror, the propaganda tactics deployed by these guerrilla fighters have involved uploading onto the Internet dozens of videos of decapitations whether of enemy soldiers or western hostages.

BEHEADING OF 16 SYRIAN SOLDIERS AND PETER KASSIG The Portuguese Mickaël dos Santos came to be named as one of the executioners in the most violent of videos of Jihad

On the social networks, there are those who share the images of the heads of enemies serving as footballs. Whoever does not obey, dies is the motto imported from medieval era wars. Some of the Portuguese jihadists have joined this game of horror and hold no sway in clicking on ‘like’ or sharing such photos and videos.

On 7th June 2014, one of these operatives, who introduces himself as the “sniper and soldier of Allah since 11th September 2001”, asked another fighter via Facebook: “Have you got the video of yesterday’s execution?” Answer: “Not yet. The video was delayed until today. I’ll do my best to get it out”.

The scale of the violence has attained levels never before seen in recent wars. In June, Islamic State executed 600 prisoners in the Badoush prison, near Mosul. In October, the mujahedeen executed over 200 Iraqi members of a Sunni tribe following their occupation of the western region of the country.

Two common graves were discovered containing the bodies of men belonging to the tribe whose land Islamic State had just occupied. The victims were shot at close range. The jihadists had ordered the men of the tribe to leave their villages and move to another place, promising them “safe passage”. They were lying with all the victims kidnapped and killed.

The international coalition’s air strikes, led by the United States, have already caused around five hundred casualties among the jihadists, including Sandro ‘Funa’, in Kobane. All the Portuguese remain not far from the targets hit.

One of the guerrilla fighters told Expresso that he had witnessed one of the most recent bombardments:

“I saw the explosion and afterwards the smoke. I still haven’t realised whether there were dead”, said Mikael Batista.

The strike’s target was “the house of a mujahedeen”, he added via Messenger and Facebook. In the photo, the dense smoke caused by the attack is very visible.

Explosion in Raqqa Photograph by Mikaël Batista published on the social networks.

While some fight on the frontlines, others have obtained positions of some importance within the military hierarchy, which enables them to follow the war from another perspective. Some of the Portuguese in that London Leyton cell retain close ties to Jihadi John, the executioner of five westerners (the journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and the volunteers David Haines, Allan Henning and Peter Kassig).

According to sources connected with European secret services, these jihadists play “a very important role” not only in staging but also in distributing the videos uploaded onto social networks and thus out to the world.

“It was not the Portuguese who decapitated the victims nor did they film them but they are behind much of what happens there.”

A tweet made by one of these Portuguese on 10th July, thirty nine days before the James Foley decapitation video, bolsters this conviction. The jihadist wrote: “Message to America. Islamic State is making a new film. Thank you for the actors”. On 19th August, the video title that showed the corpse and covered face and with the victim dressed in an orange suit was precisely entitled “Message to America”.

The extreme daily violence of the Caliphate has caused collateral damage within Islamic State’s own ranks: hundreds of western jihadists now regret embarking on this “adventure” and now no longer believe in the ideas that made them leave behind their flats and apartments in the suburbs of different European capitals. Many are fleeing Islamic State and returning home. Over 300, according to the latest number from the Western authorities.

For some, there shall be only one fate: prison. How, it is no easy task for the European courts to prove individuals committed war crimes. The United Kingdom, Germany and France are tightening the legal framework to charge and imprison jihadists for acts related to terrorism. Denmark opted for the politically correct solution: committing them to ‘de-radicalisation’ centres.

Were there to be Portuguese returnee jihadists, what is most certain is that they would be detained and questioned for 48 hours. However, the Portuguese law has no other provision – unless there is specific evidence that they assisted in killing and raping civilians, amputating or torturing enemies or they begin planning to commit some domestic terrorist attack.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Rui Machete guarantees that there are three wishing to return. They are threatened inside the Caliphate as happened with the 30 British jihadists who said they wished to flee the atrocities committed in the name of Allah. If they do manage to safely reach the Turkish border, would they then be rescued by the Western authorities?

Irrespective of what comes to happen, for these three, and along with all the repentant Portuguese jihadists, nothing in their lives shall ever be the same again. They fought on behalf of an army that takes the name of State in a war that has already broken all barriers to human cruelty and each new video merely inaugurates another bloody murder and its propaganda. They fight the dirtiest of all the wars of this century.

© Expresso 2014

ReportHugo Franco e Raquel Moleiro

Video and MultimediaJoana Beleza

Illustrations and Motion GraphicsJoão Roberto

Web DesignTiago Pereira dos Santos

Interactive DevelopmentPedro Pinto e Tiago Simão

Maps@OpenStreetMap contributors

MusicKevin Macleod

Production SupportAna Bela Vieira

TranslationKevin Rose

EditorsGermano Oliveira e Pedro Santos Guerreiro

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