According to a Syrian Facebook resource(@syriabestnews) in the Al Rashidin district in southwest Aleppo, a soldier named Al-Takbir blew up when setting up an explosive device. What we know about him that, together with several other comrades, he came to Syria from Ukraine about a year ago and joined the Jabhat al-Nusra group. It is noted that Al-Takbir fought in gangs operating in the Aleppo area and was known for his ruthlessness towards the captured soldiers of the Syrian army and civilians.
Information about the fact that citizens of Ukraine are fighting on the jihadists side in Syria is not new. Not so long ago, Syrian sources disseminated information about the death of another Ukrainian of Crimean Tatar origin with the call sign Al Kerim, who fought in one of the detachments of the HYAT Tahrir ash-Sham illegal military group.
However, the name Al-Takbir (in Islam Takbir is a call for the glorification of Allah with the words “Allahu Akbar” – ed.) assumed by the Ukrainian mercenary seemed very familiar. This is how the Belarusian citizen Daniil Lyashuk called himself, while serving in the Tornado patrol unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine in 2014-2015, where he distinguished himself by crimes against civilians of the Lugansk region.
Noticeably, during this period he was awarded the Ukrainian Medal “For Military Service.”
But it wasn’t Lyashuk’s cruelty against the peaceful population of Donbass that became his calling card. There was an excessive number of scumbags in Tornado responsible for the deaths of dozens of innocent people. His speciality was open propaganda for the values of the extremist organization Islamic State.
Forsaking his kinship, Lyashuk, who imagines himself a “fighter for the true faith,” took the name “Daniyal al-Takbir” and a self-explanatory call sign “Mujahid”. At that, the “battle for faith” was perceived by him exclusively in the form of cruelty laced with sadism. In one of the posts on his VKontakte page, Lyashuk published a photo of the execution by the caliphate militants of American reporter James Foley with an explanation: “A man who knows what he is fighting for is truly happy. Unhappy is the one who has nothing to fight for.”
He also posted photos of mass execution of prisoners by firing squad conducted by jihadists in Iraq, and war crimes of Chechen separatists with approving comments. “Al-Takbir” especially loved to take photos against the black flag of ISIS.
However, among the Nazis from Tornado, Lyashuk had quite a few like-minded people who shared the ideas of radical Islam. Together, they committed egregious crimes against unarmed people, justifying it with wartime expediency and fighting against the “separatists” who were for them like infidels.
According to the investigation, the Tornado members equipped a torture room in the basement of a school in Severodonetsk, where, in the most nightmarish traditions of the fascist Gestapo, they tortured their victims.
This led to the fact that on June 18, 2015, the so-called Tornado battalion was disbanded. A number of former fighters, including its founder and leader Ruslan Onishchenko, have been arrested. Daniil Lyashuk managed to escape. The Ukrainian prosecutor’s office initiates a criminal case against him for committing particularly serious crimes.
In one of the interviews, Lyashuk stated that he joined the “anti-terroristic operation” because he had separate issue to settle with the Russians and with the end of the ATO his personal war would not end. So, does it turn out that, realizing his crazy promise, Lyashuk – “Al-Takbir”, after the disbandment of Tornado, moved to Syria, where he found his ignominious end, fighting in the ranks of international terrorists?
An open source study on this topic showed that on September 9, 2015, Lyashuk was arrested in one of the motels near Kiev, after which he was placed in the famous Lukyanovka detention center for highly dangerous criminals. When he was detained, an issued ID with the name of Al-Takbir Daniyal Alexandrovich was confiscated from him.
Chief Military Procurator of Ukraine Anatoliy Matios personally informed about the detention of the “most dangerous and cruel of all suspects” referring to the criminal case against the Tornado battalion. According to him, “it was “Mojahed”-Lyashuk who with extreme cynicism and audacity, cruelty and ruthlessness committed the most cruel torture on the local population of the Lugansk region, organized and took direct part in the rape of the detainees, which he, along with other suspects, kidnapped on mercenary motives.” According to the investigation, only between March 13 and April 2, 2015, Lyashuk took part in the kidnapping and torturing of 10 people.
However, the criminal history of Lyashuk – Al-Takbir doesn’t stop here.
In June 2016, the Belarusian Prosecutor General’s Office sent a request to Ukraine to extradite Lyashuk, who was being prosecuted in Belarus under Part 2 of Art. 339 of the Criminal Code of the Republic (malicious hooliganism). According to the official representative of the General Prosecutor’s Office of Belarus, Dmitry Brylev, “he and his friends beat up young people and made them pronounce disparaging, offensive, obscene remarks against people who support anti-fascist views”. As follows from the documents posted in the Internet in October 2016, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine decided to extradite its citizen Daniil Lyashuk to Belarus. However, his actual transfer, in accordance with the extradition order, was delayed until the completion of the criminal proceedings in Ukraine.
Investigative actions against Lyashuk lasted for more than a year and a half and in April 2017, Daniil al-Takbir was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the crimes he committed by the Obolobsky District Court of Kiev. He was accused of committing the crimes indicated in part 1 of article 255 (“Creating a criminal organization with the purpose of committing a serious or particularly serious crime or participating in it, or participating in crimes committed by such an organization”), part 5 of article 27 (“Aiding in committing a crime or its concealment “), part 2 of article 365 (“Excess of power or official authority, if it was accompanied by violence, use of a weapon or painful and insulting actions against the victim”), part 3 of article 1 46 (“Illegal deprivation of liberty or abduction of a person, committed as part of an organized group, or entailing grave consequences”) and part 2 of Article 127 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (“Torture committed by prior agreement by a group of persons, or an official using his official position”).
However, despite the completion of the criminal proceedings into Lyashuk’s case and the existing order of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine to extradite him to the Belarusian side, the Ukrainian Themis unexpectedly reversed, showing an inexplicable humanism against the extremist. In September 2018, Verkhovna Rada deputy from the Arseny Yatsenyuk’s Popular Front party, Yury Tymoshenko, said that he had discussed Lyashuk’s extradition with Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yury Lutsenko, who promised to refuse Minsk to extradite him.
It was not possible to find out from open sources for certain if Lyashuk was extradited to Belarus, or he remained to serve his sentence in Ukraine. However, this is not so important. It is clear that neither in Ukraine nor in Belarus are there amnesty or early release for criminals who have committed particularly serious crimes. And therefore it doesn’t really matter in what prison the criminal Lyashuk – “Al-Takbir” is sitting: in the Ukrainian or in the Belarusian one. The main thing is that he is in prison.
Thus, it is obvious that the Jabhat al-Nusra militant who blew up near Aleppo on his own mine was not Daniil Lyashuk. We are talking about two different people who have taken the same name that is not typical for Ukraine – “Al-Takbir”. However, besides their name, another similar distinctive feature is theirs – cruelty towards civilians.
Still, the question it out there – what dead Ukrainian jihadist with the Arabic name Al-Takbir the Syrian sources are reporting? It is likely that it will remain unanswered. Moreover, Ukraine has long earned the sad glory of a supplier of recruits for terrorist organizations of all stripes.
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