Abdel Majed Abdel Bary — a 23-year-old British Egyptian man who reportedly left his home in London to join jihadist fighters in Syria last year — is one of three people multiple media outlets have identified as suspects in the gruesome videotaped execution of American journalist James Foley.
Prior to his involvement with Islamic extremists, Bary had a rap career, and in that past life he expressed support for a different group, the online activist hacker collective Anonymous.
Bary, who used the musical aliases Lyricist Jinn and L. Jinn, has generated the most headlines of the trio who have been publicly linked to Foley's death. His infamy is due to his rap career, a tweet he sent earlier this month showing him holding what appeared to be a severed head, and that his father, Adel Abdel Bary, is currently in U.S. federal prison charged with "conspiring with members of Al Qaeda ... in connection with the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania."
In an interview last year, the younger Bary's mother described the family's legal battles, which began in 1998 and included a lengthy fight over Adel Bary's extradition from England. She described that extradition as an "unfair" experience for her children. Adel Bary's attorney did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
In an email to Business Insider, Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the White House's National Security Council, declined to comment on British media reports identifying the younger Bary as a suspect in Foley's killing.
A "Lyricist Jinn" Facebook page that was created in 2012 and apparently belongs to Bary has not been updated since March, when the page linked to a Daily Mail report about his activities in Syria and dismissed it as coming from "pagan newspapers." Bary did not respond to a message from Business Insider to the account owner.
As Lyricist Jinn, Bary discussed his father's arrest in several of his songs. He also rapped about his experiences growing up poor and said he resorted to drug dealing. In one song, titled "The Beginning," he raged at the people who took his father away.
"I swear the day they came and took my dad I could've killed a couple too and I wouldn't have looked back," rapped Bary. "Imagine back then I was only 6. Just picture what I'll do now with a loaded stick."
"#OpCensorDis2," Bary's ode to Anonymous, might seem like his most overtly political song. One music site described it as "the new anthem of #OpCensorThis, a campaign initiated by TeaMp0isoN hackers back in 2011 as a form of protest against censorship." In the song, Bary allies himself with an "army of warriors starting disorder" and declares "the system is a primitive lie."
Despite this political commentary, however, the video for "#OpCensorDis2," which features the rappers Tabanacle and Proverbz along with Bary, begins with a disclaimer: "This Track and Video constitutes and anthem created on behalf of Anonymous but does not necessarilly [sic] reflect the views of beliefs of the artists involved."
Tabanacle and Proverbz did not respond to requests for comment. Watch the "#OpCensorDis2" video below.
