An Aberdeen man who fled the UK to join barbaric terrorists who have beheaded hostages in Iraq claimed last night that his heart “is not made of stone’.
IS militant Abdul Rakib Amin has sent a message home to his family – telling them that he misses and loves them but that he loves Allah more.
The 26-year-old left Britain earlier this year to join Islamic jihadists, who have killed thousands of Syrians, publicly beheaded British and American journalists and even brutally murdered an aid worker.
His latest contact with his relatives indicates he is still alive, despite unconfirmed reports that he had died several weeks ago in battle.
After Amin left the UK, he said he had no intention of returning and would continue to fight until he was killed.
His friends in his north-east hometown spoke of their complete shock and utter disbelief that a man who they thought was just “one of the guys” had become so radicalised.
In a recent message to his family, Amin asks them to believe that he is not completely heartless, despite having warned people in Britain that IS “are not going to attack them… yet”.
“O my family do not think my heart has become a stone,” he said.
“I do miss you, I love you, but I love Allah more.”
The message was revealed on his sister’s social media account, attached to a now-notorious picture of her older brother in which he grins at the camera and brandishes an assault rifle.
She signs the message off from “Abu Baraa”, a name Amin has been fighting under.
The bearded militant in the picture is unrecognisable from the smiling, innocent young lad photographed when he was living in Aberdeen.
Amin moved with his family from Bangladesh to the city’s Froghall area when he was aged 10.
He spent two years at Sunnybank Primary School then moved to St Machar Academy.
After Amin completed his second year at the academy, his father moved him back to Bangladesh because – according to a friend – he was becoming “too westernised”.
When he returned to the north-east after two years, his friend noticed there had been a change in him, and that he had become more religious.
His best pal spoke to the Press and Journal about how he had played football with Amin at Aberdeen Sports Village just 18 months before his friend was exposed as an extremist.
The next time he saw him was in the 13-minute IS propaganda film, There Is No Life Without Jihad, in which Amin was encouraging would-be fighters to join him to wage jihad.
“Forget everyone. Read the Koran, read the instruction of life. Find out what is jihad,” he said.
“Are you willing to sacrifice the fat job you’ve got, the big car, the family you have?
“Are you willing to sacrifice this, for the sake of Allah? If you do Allah will give you back 700 times more.
“All my brothers living in the West, I know how you feel. When I used to live there, in the heart you feel depressed. The cure for the depression is jihad.
“All my brothers, come to jihad. Feel the honour we are feeling. Feel the happiness we are feeling.”
Amin has defended his actions, saying that there is no place he would rather be.
He said he told his family where he had gone after he arrived in Syria.
It is unlikely he will ever be able to return to the country he once called home, and he has had his assets frozen under counter-terrorism laws.
“I left the UK to fight for the sake of Allah – to give everything I have for the sake of Allah to establish the seat of Allah in the land,” he said.
“I left the house with the intention of not to go back. I’m going to stay and fight until the (caliphate) is established, or I die. My parents know that I left and I was going to Syria, I told them later on.
“One of the happiest moments in my life was when the plane took off from Gatwick Airport.”
Amin said he first became aware of IS through Twitter and that he had in no way been radicalised in Aberdeen.
“Me and five other brothers in the UK, we didn’t know anyone in Syria so we looked at Twitter and found some guys talking about jihad. They were asking ‘is there ways to get in?’,” he explained.
“In the Aberdeen mosque there is not one person with the same mentality as me. They don’t agree with jihad and disagree with all these extremists.
“We are not scared of anyone and we are going to expand. People in the UK are scared we are going to attack them – we are not going to attack them… yet.”