Denis Cuspert
German rapper and ISIL gangster (1975–2018)
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 (Arabic: أبو طلحة الألماني), was a German rapper who became a member of the Islamic State.
Cuspert ended his rap career in 2010, converted to Islam and took on the new Islamic name Abou Maleeq (Arabic: أبو طلحة). He left Germany in 2012 for Egypt and Libya, eventually going to Syria in 2013, 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 Arab Air Force. In 2014, he gave his oath of allegiance to Islamist-Jihadi group the Islamic State (IS).
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 Wafa' Media Foundation announced his death during clashes in the town of Gharanij.
Early life and education
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.
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This entry incorporates text from “Denis Cuspert” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.