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1. Two months ago an airstrike on an ISIS prison killed infamous Austrian Jihadi Mohamed Mahmoud. Many speculated that he was incarcerated by Hazimi "extremists" within ISIS due to his more moderate stance on Takfir. I don't think that was the main reason. bild.de/bild-plus/poli…
2. Mahmoud, who had a Jihadi career since at least 2005, spreading propaganda for AQI and serving four years jail time, was arguably the most influential German-speaking Jihadi after 2011, when he moved to Berlin and teamed up with former Rapper Denis Cuspert aka Deso Dogg. 
3. Their Millatu Ibrahim gang became the core group of the German Jihadis, influencing many of those who later joined ISIS. MI was banned by the German MoI in 2012, after which Mahmoud, Cuspert and some other travelled to Egypt with Mahmoud claiming to be the amir of the group.
4. While Mahmoud gave lectures to the other members, it was his wife Miranda K. who maintained the website of the group and edited the propaganda stuff. A former drug addict, she and Mahmoud were suspected of smoking pot by other members of the Egypt group.
5. Mahmoud and his wife were described as bossy which led to a lot of Fitna. Mahmoud especially bullied Samir M., a Jihadi from Berlin, whom he suspected of spying. At some point, the group members didn't gave Samir (pic w/ Mahmoud) the Salam anymore and sometimes assaulted him.
6. Isolated from his group, Samir was later killed in Syria, where he had joined AQ affiliates. The rest of the MI group went from Egypt briefly to Libya, where they thought about joining AQIM in Mali. As Jihad in the desert is much harder, they ultimately went for Syria.
7. While Mahmoud and most of the group arrived in Syria, some of them were stuck in Turkey. Mahmoud then went back to Turkey, where he was arrested as he was travelling with a faked Libyan passport – he had burnt his Austrian passport in Libya before.
8. He was put under house arrest, though he still had internet access and continued to communicate with his group in Syria and even spread propaganda. After more than a year, he was released in 2014 in a prisoner exchange after ISIS had captured Turkish diplomats in Mosul.
9. A few days later he posed in Raqqa with decapitated corpses. Mahmoud married Syrian Ahlam al-Nasr, arguably the most important of his many wives. He used to marry and divorce more than any other Jihadi from the German group; he divorced his wife Miranda while still in Turkey.
10. Miranda K. first stayed in Tabqa where she lived briefly together with Daniela Greene, the rogue FBI translator who married Cuspert before fleeing the Caliphate again. Thread here:
11. K. moved to Mosul and married an Iraqi ISIS amir. After he was killed, she married a Dagestani ISIS fighter. She stayed in Mosul during the ISF offensive in 2016 and told me she was the last German left there (turned out to be wrong), before she was killed in the battle.
12. Mahmoud meanwhile stayed in Syria, where he gave Islamic lectures for the Germans until they had to stop due to @cjtfoir-airstrikes. Thanks to his mentor Turki al-Binali, he gained some more prominence, even helding the Khutba in Raqqa.
13. The peak in his Jihadi career came in August 2015, when ISIS released a full German video from Palmyra, with Mahmoud murdering a captive. The video was filmed by fellow MI member Badr A., thread here:
14. The media attention after the Palmyra video fired him up: He raged on Twitter for some time, threatening the infidels and calling upon Jihadis in Germany to act brutally. His rage tweets were so embarrassing that ISIS forbid him to continue tweeting.
15. He then went to Telegram, where he didn't use his old kunya Abu Usama al-Gharib but a new one. He had threatened me before (invited me to Raqqa where he would cut off my head), but in 2016, we had a different communication.
16. I contacted some ISIS instructors back then, claiming that I am willing to conduct an attack. One of those German instructors used Mahmoud's new kunya.
17. Things didn't go well for Mahmoud. After the Palmyra video, he had a big fallout with the ISIS media department. His former MI fellows – among them Christian Emde, the highest-ranking German media guy – turned against him, sick of his bossy attitude.
18. An ISIS member told me that the organization decided to punish Mahmoud for his misdemeanor: He was sent to the desert of Homs into a penal camp, where he was forced to do simple tasks, which was probably very humiliating for egotistic Mahmoud.
19. He later returned from Homs and went back to Eastern Syria, but didn't really gained his old status. A German ISIS member told me that he was briefly in charge of a Madhafa/women's shelter in Mayadeen, though I am not sure if this was the right job for him.
20. Mahmoud had some serious fallouts with his longtime partner Cuspert, who sometimes violently attacked him. When the Caliphate crumbled and they both had to retreat to the MERV region, they got along again.
Correction: Her second husband was from Tajikistan.
21. After ISIS retreated from Mayadeen, Mahmoud moved to al-Sousa. A German ISIS member who was Mahmoud's neighbour in Raqqa and then also lived in al-Sousa told me that he only left his house wearing a Balaclava. One of his wives was pregnant back then.
22. When his longtime friend Cuspert was KIA one year ago, the martyrdom pictures were not released by official ISIS media, but al-Wafa media, a former ISIS supporter group which grew critical of certain trends within ISIS.
23. Mahmoud's wife Ahlam al-Nasr published a poem for Cuspert through al-Wafa and it's affiliated media networks, leading to speculation that Mahmoud was also somehow involved with al-Wafa.
24. Wafa and it's affiliated media like Turath al-Ilmi published Jihadi clerics who argued against the followers of Ahmed al-Hazimi and chain takfir (declaring takfir on those who are not declaring takfir on murtadeen). ISIS clarified and condemned chain takfir and Hazimis.
25. However, Wafa and its supporters believe that ISIS' internal security apparatus is still run by Hazimis (some German ISIS members also believed this). Mahmoud's mentor Turki al-Binali (who gave him an Ijazah) was also a critic of chain takfir before he was killed in 2017.
26. His closeness to Wafa through his wife, the stance of his mentor on chain takfir and the fact that he died with other imprisoned "moderate" clerics Abu Hafs al-Hamdani and Abu Musab al-Sahrawi led to speculation that Mahmoud had also been imprisoned for his "moderate" stance.
27. After Turath al-Ilmi first published the message of his death 28/11/18, Amaq released a video of the aftermath airstrike on the prison in al-Kashmah (but without mentioning Mahmoud). Turath al-Ilmi then released pictures of the corpses of Mahmoud and the other clerics.
28. Wafa and their supporters claimed that the Hazimis within ISIS had arrested Mahmoud and the other Jihadi clerics and put them in the prison to "kill them by proxy" (as they somehow assumed that the prison would be targeted by airstrikes). This assumption is very questionable.
29. After Mahmoud was killed, I asked another German ISIS member who was in the area when Mahmoud was arrested. The ISIS member confirmed that Mahmoud was arrested, but didn't give any reason.
30. The assumption that Mahmoud was arrested for his "moderate stance" is not supported by any facts. His supporters occasionally share his many lectures and writings and I haven't found an explicit condemnation of Hazimis nor chain takfir yet.
31. That he was in the same prison like al-Hamdani and al-Sahrawi doesn't mean he was arrested for the same reason or that he was treated badly there. Several German ISIS members I spoke to had been imprisoned once, it's usually not a big deal, unless you are accused of spying.
32. But unlike the speculation about his alleged "moderate stance", it's an established fact that Mahmoud was very isolated from the German community (though he had reconciled with Cuspert). He tried to find loyal German followers again, but was shunned.
33. Some German ISIS members I spoke to who knew him before and after their Hijra despised him and stayed away from him in the Albu Kamal pocket. Only one German woman would talk nicely about him at all, as Mahmoud apparently took care for her kids before.
34. Can't say for sure what the reason for his imprisonment was, but he was a known troublemaker, egocentric, isolated, had already received punishments, was sent to a penal camp and had lots of disgruntled former wives.
35. From a CVE point of view, his incarceration by ISIS was probably the best outcome. There were almost no eulogies among his supporters left in Germany, just a few words here and there for Mahmoud, who was the most influential German-speaking Jihadi preacher a few years ago.
