Denis Cuspert

Denis Mamadou Gerhard Cuspert (18 October 1975 – 17 January 2018), also known by his stage name Deso Dogg and his nom de guerre Abu Talha al-Almani, was a German rapper who became a member of the Islamic State.

Cuspert was born in Kreuzberg, Berlin on 18 October 1975.

His father, Richard Luc-Giffard, was a Ghanaian national who had been deported before Cuspert was born.

His mother, Sigrid Cuspert, is German.

He was later raised in Charlottenburg, Moabit and Schöneberg.

His mother remarried a U.S. Army officer with whom Cuspert had ongoing conflicts.

He had a troubled youth and spent some time in a juvenile detention center.

In 1995, he began a rapping career with varying success, as he got increasingly involved in street trouble and eventually in crime.

In 2002, he adopted the name Deso Dogg and began recording with the German rapper Charnell, a gangster rapper from Berlin.

Deso Dogg was, at that time, under detention in an open prison system for minor offenders.

By mid-2004, he was repeatedly arrested for various new offenses, including violations of the German Opium Act.

Consequently, his probation was revoked and Deso Dogg had to serve time in the Tegel Prison.

He was in a criminal gang called the "36 Boys", which was based in Kreuzberg, Berlin.

The 36 Boys got in violent confrontations with other immigrant street gangs.

"I always fought for 36," Cuspert told a reporter of the Exberliner named Robert Rigney.

"I bled for 36. I was stabbed for 36."

After his release from detention, he worked with Montana of Montana Beatz and with the producer Dean Dawson of Streetlife Entertainment.

He quit Streetlife label in 2007, reportedly to keep his artistic freedom.

In September 2007, he announced that he was working on a double album titled Alle Augen Auf Mich ("All Eyes on Me").

He also announced that he would quit after this project because he felt disappointed and betrayed by many people in the German rap scene.

In August 2008, he appeared in the television series Der Bluff, acting as a student who becomes a gangsta rapper.

The release of the album was repeatedly delayed and was ultimately released in November 2009.

Cuspert ended his rap career in 2010, converted to Islam and took on the new Islamic name Abou Maleeq.

In 2010, his song "Willkommen in meiner Welt" (meaning Welcome to my world) was used in the ARD film courage to Zivilcourage (meaning moral courage).

Following a near death experience after a car crash, and affected by Pierre Vogel, a former professional boxer and converted Islamist, he ended his rap career in 2010, declaring his own religious conversion to Islam.

He declared his decision to convert in a public video.

He became a member of a radical Islamic group called Die Wahre Religion (meaning The True Religion).

He also said he was dropping his earlier name Deso Dogg in favor of the Islamic name Abou Maleeq.

After his conversion he became a vocal Islamic music "nasheed" singer, singing in German.

Controversies ensued as he declared public support for Islamic "Mujahideen" forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Chechnya, describing Berlin as eine weitere Kuffar-Metropole ("yet another kuffar (infidel) metropolis").

In April 2011, the Berlin public prosecutor brought charges of illegal possession of weapons against him after Cuspert appeared as "Abou Maleeq" in a YouTube video brandishing arms.

During a house raid, 16 cartridges of 9 mm caliber and .22 were found on the premises.

On 18 August 2011, he was found guilty and fined 1800 euros without any jail term being specified.

German officials remained vigilant, however, claiming his videos and speeches contained inflammatory rhetoric that promoted violence.

Guido Steinberg, an Islamic studies expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs think-tank stated that Dogg's music "support[s] a radicalisation process."

He left Germany in 2012 for Egypt and eventually Syria, where he fought with jihadist anti-government forces in the Syrian Civil War, under the nom de guerre of Abu Talha Al-Almani (meaning Abu Talha the German).

He was wounded during fighting in the northern-Syrian town of Azaz in an air-strike conducted by the Syrian Air Force.

In 2014, he gave his oath of allegiance to Islamist-Jihadi group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

The United States Department of State added Cuspert to its list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists on 9 February 2015, and the United Nations Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee designated him on 11 February 2015.

In January 2018, the pro-ISIL Wafa' Media Foundation announced his death during clashes in the town of Gharanij.