AT LARGE
- Full name: Mahmoud Boudouaïa
- Pseudonym: N/a
- Alternatives: N/a
- Location: pos Syria, pos Iraq, pos Turkey, fmr France
- Affiliation: Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [DaIISh]
Mahmoud Boudouaïa is an immigrant of North African descent from the French city of Strasbourg where he was known to be involved in crime. In 2008, Boudouaïa was sentenced to nine years in prison for a 2004 armed robbery in Traenheim.1 Following his release from prison in 2012, he, his wife and their eight children settled in the Savoyard town of Annemasse.2 Around the same time, the family reportedly began showing signs of religious radicalization.3 In March 2014, one of Boudouäia’s sons traveled to Syria and joined jihadi forces.4 Another son quickly followed his brother. The eldest of the two men was active on social media and at one point vowed to continue to fight until the jihadis reach “Palestine” so they could “slit the throats of the Jews”.5 In July 2014, one of them was killed while fighting in the ranks of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [DaIISh; Dawlat al-Islamiya fi-Iraq wal ash-Sham].6
Later in the summer of 2014, Boudouäia took the rest of his family to Syria in a camping car.7 The family settled in Raqqa.8 In the northern Syrian city, Boudouaïa and his offspring were allegedly close to Oumar Diaw, an influential Senegalese jihadi from Strasbourg.9 In the fall of 2014, one of the family’s adolescent sons was featured in a video distributed by Diaw.10 Over the next months, three other sons of Boudouaïa died in air strikes and clashes.11 Thirteen-year-old Youssef Boudouaïa was killed by gunfire while surveilling a border post in the Homs province in January 2015. His death was covered in the French press.12 Familial tragedy apparently did not diminish Boudouaïa’s enthusiasm for the DaIISh. His wife allegedly expressed her desire to die as a martyr for Islam in a letter to the organization’s top leader Ibrahim al-Badri [aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi].13 The current whereabouts and status of Boudouaïa, his wife and their surviving children is unknown.
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