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Omar Ali Hussain, known as Abu Sa’eed al-Britani, is a British Islamic militant and member of the Islamic State.
Contents
History
Hussain was born in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, on 21 March 1987.
He tried to leave Britain for Pakistan in 2010 but was stopped by police on suspicion that he planned to head to Afghanistan.
Syria
In December 2013, Hussain went to the police station in the town of High Wycombe and told officers that he intended to travel to Syria from Turkey with an aid convoy. He later boarded a flight to Turkey from Gatwick Airport, where he was stopped by detectives. However, he told them he was going to distribute aid to Syrian children, and was allowed to continue his journey. In a November 2015 interview with BBC Newsnight, he said travelled successfully "by blagging it the whole way through".
Mohammed Abdul Saboor, 25, also of High Wycombe, was jailed for 21 months in an Old Bailey trial after he tried to send Hussain ballistic prescription goggles, which protect against small projectiles and fragments.
On the 3 October 2014, he appeared in an IS video message called Message of the Mujahid.
US and UN sanctions
The United States Department of the Treasury describes Hussain as "of September 2015, one of ISIL’s most prominent recruiters". According to the US treasury, as an IS fighter, he offered tips on evading British security to individuals interested in leaving the United Kingdom to fight with IS.
On 28 September 2015, he was sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee and made subject to an INTERPOL-UN Security Council Special Notice.
The UN narrative summary describes him thus, "In January 2014, Omar Ali Hussain travelled to the Syrian Arab Republic to fight for Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), listed as Al-Qaida in Iraq (QDe.115), and has since demonstrated an active online presence on extremist websites and social media. Hussain uses this online presence to recruit individuals for combat and for operational roles in ISIL "
Tabloid controversies
Hussain has attracted a considerable level of coverage from British tabloid newspapers including the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror. The Daily Mail has dubbed him the 'supermarket jihadi' because he once to work in the British supermarket Morrisons as a security guard.
IS censorship
Hussain has been censured by IS media operatives for his open online social media presence, which is banned by the group.