Denis Cuspert, who went by his hip-hop name “Deso Dogg”, died in an October 16 attack near Raqqa, Syria, according to Department of Defense spokeswoman Elissa Smith.
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Reports social media suggested Cuspert was killed Raqqa, east of Aleppo.
Born Denis Cuspert – hogged limelight as a rapper under the name of “Deso Dogg” and after joining ranks with ISIS, he went by the name Abu Talha al-Almani.
He traveled to fight Jihad in Syria after converting to Islam and becoming involved with Millatu Ibrahim, a pro-Jihadi group in Germany founded by Mohamed Mahmoud, an Austrian jihadi who has also taken on a prominent propaganda role for ISIS in Syria.
The State Department announced in February that Cuspert has been named as a specially designated global terrorist.
He is thought to have joined ISIS in 2012, appearing in numerous propaganda videos – in one of which he was holding a severed head.
Another defence official said Cuspert “was not considered a high-value target [and] we were not specifically targeting him”.
Cuspert had pledged an oath of loyalty to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and was a chief recruiter of German fighters, officials added. “He publicly threatened the president of the United States and German citizens; he also encouraged Western Muslims to conduct attacks”.
He also noted that other IS jihadists may have been hit.
IS prohibits music, but singing is allowed, and a few of the jihadists’ grisly videos are set to a vocal sound track.
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Jihadist sources in April 2014 said Cuspert had been killed in Syria but they later retracted the claim.
