Deso Dogg, German rapper turned ISIS militant, reportedly killed in airstrike
The militant was wrongly declared dead in 2014, and was briefly married to a rogue F.B.I. agent.
A U.S.-based monitoring group has announced that airstrikes in Syria have claimed the life of Denis Cuspert, who rapped in Germany as Deso Dogg before travelling to Syria in 2013 to join the Islamic State. He became known for his appearances in propaganda videos under the alias Abu Talha al-Almani, and was called "a pop star of jihad” by Berlin’s intelligence service Verfassungsschutz for his high visibility and recruiting power.
The pro-Islamic State outlet Wafa' Media Foundation reportedly shared eight images of Cuspert's corpse, the monitoring group said, and announced that he had been killed on Wednesday in Gharanij, a town located in Syria's Deir Ezzor province.
The Pentagon erroneously believed that Cuspert had been killed in an airstrike in October 2015, and announced in August 2016 that he had in fact survived the attack.
An F.B.I. translator named Daniela Green was charged with travelling to Syria in June 2014 and marrying Cuspert, the ISIS operative she was supposed to be investigating. Greene fled Syria and her new husband in August 2014, and was charged in the United States, serving two years in prison. Her trip, and prison sentence, was not revealed until May 2017.