(Washington Post) Five years ago, Hamza Parvez was a pudgy Islamic State recruit from West London known for his unusual social media posts about kittens, KFC and what passed for fast food in the so-called caliphate.
But as the Islamic State’s territory receded, so did his presence online.
For years, the fate of Abu Hamza al-Britani, as he was known, was unclear. The militant, now 26, ended up alive and held in a prison in northern Syria after surrendering to Kurdish-led forces outside the group’s final stronghold in Baghouz earlier this month.
His previous posts on Twitter, Instagram and Ask.fm in the early days of the caliphate revealed a duality not often seen in the social media traffic from the Islamic State.
