British man charged with anti-gay hate crime kills eight in Iraq suicide bombing
A British man who was charged with a hate crime for handing out anti-gay leaflets has reportedly killed himself in a suicide bombing in Iraq.
32-year-old Kabir Ahmed, of Derby, was part of an extremist group protesting the Derby Pride parade in 2011, chanting “Gays. gays, gays, we hope you die of AIDS”.
He was jailed for 15 months in February 2012 for handing out leaflets which call for gay people to be hanged.
Ahmed had told Derby Crown Court at the time: “We are living in a society and if we don’t stop it something like a tsunami will happen here, something on that scale. You can think of it as a little vigilante thing.”
The Telegraph is reporting that Mr Ahmed, who left Britain to fight for ISIS in Iraq, carried out a suicide bombing in the city of Baiji yesterday.
Shiraz Maher, a senior fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalism at King’s College London, identified Mr Ahmed – now known as Abu Sumayyah – as the suicide bomber.
He tweeted: “British foreign fighter, Abu Sumayyah, (real name: Kabir Ahmed) from Derby carried out a suicide bombing in Baiji, Iraq, yesterday.”
He allegedly drove a truck full of explosives into a convoy, killing a high-ranking police officer, seven people and himself, and injuring 15 others.
A spokesperson for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: “We are aware of reports of the death of a British national in Iraq and are looking into them.”
