An American rapper who is thought to have been killed in Syria while fighting for ISIS was a school friend of an Islamic convert who joined the terrorist group al-Shabab, it has emerged.
It was confirmed by a state official on Tuesday that Douglas McArthur McCain travelled to Syria to join a militant group, most likely the Islamic State, and had been killed fighting over the weekend.
Now it has been revealed that McCain, who had most recently lived in San Diego but grew up outisde Minneapolis, attended the same high school as Troy Kastigar, who died in 2009 aged 28, while fighting for al-Shabab in Somalia.
Both men were said to have struck up a close friendship with each other during their time at Robbinsdale Cooper High School in the town of New Hope, where McCain graduated in 1999.
Kastigar’s mother Julianne Boada told the NY Daily News: ‘They both were sort of searching, it seemed like.
‘It’s just like who would ever have predicted this outcome. For Troy, he was so bright again. It was really a path that was so wonderful to him.
‘They had quite a few friends in school who were Somali immigrants and an African American friend whose family was Muslim.’
It has been reported that Kastigar converted to Islam three years before he travelled to Somalia and appeared in a video where he was lauded as one of the ‘Minnesotan martyrs’.
Smiling and laughing in the footage, Kastigar called his battle experiences ‘the real Disneyland’ and urged other Muslims to come and ‘take pleasure in this fun.’
He was killed in 2009 in the Somali capital Mogadishu, according to the video.
It is unknown when the pair last had contact.
It comes following the death of McCain, after pictures of his body, showing his distinctive neck tattoo, and his passport were shared by the Free Syrian Army.
Source:dailymail.co.uk
