The Guardian
Sunday 22 January 2012
An alleged al-Qaida member from London is reported to have been killed in a missile attack from a US drone while fighting alongside Islamist insurgents in Somalia.
Bilal el-Berjawi is said to have died when three missiles fired from the unmanned aircraft hit his car on the outskirts of Mogadishu.
The 27-year-old's wife is understood to have given birth to a child in a London hospital a few hours before the missile strike, prompting suspicions among relatives that his location had been pinpointed as a result of a telephone conversation between the couple.
About 12 months ago, Berjawi was stripped of the British citizenship he had held since his family moved to the UK from Lebanon when he was an infant.
He is the third Muslim from London to be killed in drone attacks in recent weeks. In November, it was confirmed that Ibrahim Adam, 24, and 38-year-old Mohammed Azmer Khan, both from Ilford, had been killed in a drone attack in the South Waziristan region of Pakistan. Khan's brother, Abdul Jabbar, was killed in a drone attack in the same region a year before.
Berjawi's death was reported in a statement by the insurgent al-Kataib media foundation late on Saturday. "The martyr received what he wished for and what he went out for," the statement said. "Brother Bilal al-Berjawi was exposed to bombing in an outskirt of Mogadishu from a drone that is believed to be American. He was martyred immediately."
The Associated Press news agency reported that the strike had been confirmed by a US official in Washington.
Omar Jamal, the first secretary in the Somali mission to the UN, issued an emailed statement that said: "Good riddance, and [I] hope al-Shabaab leadership will come to their senses and cease the hostility in Somalia."
Berjawi grew up in west London, travelling to Somalia around three years ago. There were unconfirmed reports that he had been injured in a drone attack last June, after which his wife was said to have returned to the UK.
He was stripped of his British citizenship under the 2006 Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act using powers the Home Office has been deploying with increasing frequency since the last election.
Berjawi is understood to have sought to appeal against the order, but lawyers representing his family were unable to take instructions from him amid concerns that any telephone contact could precipitate a drone attack.
Relatives have dismissed allegations that he was a senior al-Qaida figure in the region. There had been claims that he helped oversee recruitment and training for al-Shabaab, which is fighting the weak UN-backed Somali government, and that he was a close associate of one of the masterminds of the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Observers say there are several hundred foreign fighters in Somalia, mainly clustered in training camps around the insurgents' stronghold of Kismayo.
An unknown number of British-Somali dual nationals have returned to Somalia and joined the fighting on both sides.
If reports are correct, Berjawi may be the second British citizen killed in Somalia in two days. Oon Friday, an official al-Shabab Twitter feed displayed documents said to belong to Said Abdi Jaras, a Somali government official from London, as proof that he had been killed in battle by al-Shabaab.
Somalia has not had a functioning nationwide government for two decades. The government controls the capital with the support of 9,500 soldiers from Uganda, Djibouti and Burundi.
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