The Jihadi Next Door will feature Abu Rumaysah, the London Muslim convert thought to have overseen the murder of five men

Unseen footage of the man suspected of being the latest British face of Islamic State propaganda is to be shown by Channel 4 on Tuesday night.

The man who oversaw the murder of five men in an Isis video released in January was thought to be a London Muslim convert called Siddhartha Dhar, who appears in a Channel 4 documentary about extremists titled the Jihadis Next Door.

In the film, Dhar, who changed his named to Abu Rumaysah after converting to Islam, shows filmmaker Jamie Roberts around a garage in east London that contains the Isis flag.

Dhar maintains it is a “real possibility” that the Isis flag will one day fly over Downing Street and warns: “One man died in Woolwich, Lee Rigby, and the whole country went up in uproar, there are many Lee Rigbys in Muslim countries … and if these issues aren’t addressed we can expect more carnage in this country and more cycle of violence”.

The footage was shot in January 2014 – nine months before Dhar was arrested by counter-terrorism police. He subsequently skipped bail and went abroad and is thought to have gone to Syria with his family.

Channel 4 has been asked by the police to let them see the film before it is broadcast, but the commissioning editor, David Brindley, said that “in line with other broadcasters” it would not comply.

The Jihadis Next Door also focuses on an extremist preacher called Abu Haleema and his friend Mohammed Shamsuddin. Haleema has links to a teen jihadi who wanted to carry out a beheading on Anzac Day in Australia, while Shamsuddin was an associate of Islamic cleric Anjem Choudary and joined a radical group after meeting hate preacher Omar Bakri, also known at the Tottenham Ayatollah.

The pair are shown organising demonstrations outside mosques or on London streets and trying to convert passers-by. However, they are often challenged by other Muslims, with one man accusing them of having sympathies with Isis – something both men avoid questions about in the film.

They are asked by Roberts to watch an execution video to gauge their reaction and are shown making jokes and laughing, although they later add it is “horrific ... it’s a horrible way to die.”

Haleema is filmed explaining that homosexuality and adultery under strict Islamic law will be punished and that the punishments are throwing people off high buildings and stoning them to death. When asked if people would watch it, he says, “of course”, and disagrees it would be gruesome, saying: “No, people like that kind of stuff, innit.”

Shamsuddin explains some of the thinking behind their views: “The British government doesn’t wanna look at its own foreign policy, all it wants to do is look at Muslims. Condemn Muslims, target Muslims, you’re stigmatising a whole community. What’s gonna happen, you’re gonna face a backlash in this country … if you’re gonna suppress a people for so long, if you’re gonna suppress and suppress I mean it’s like a tinder box, it’s gonna explode.”

And Haleema says the racism his family encountered when he was younger “builds up hatred inside of you”.

The film, made by production company Mentorn over two years, explores the status that joining the radical extremist group gives some young men.

Haleema is often recognised due to his video messages on social media and one young man, Abu Mattasim from Birmingham who has had his passport taken from him by police, says that “makes me feel very good”. When asked why, he answers: “Because it makes me feel important.”

That theme is expounded when at one point in the film Haleema is shown explaining how he makes his beard shiny with special oil and Roberts said there was “a fashion element” to the group who wear Nike Air trainers and style themselves in a particular way.



Following a screening in London of the documentary, Roberts said he understood that some people may see it as a platform for extremist preachers but argued that it “reveals the hypocrisy and stupidity” of what they are doing and said he had no sympathy “with what they are advocating”.

Roberts said that Dhar, with whom he spent time off-camera in a meeting in a Costa coffee shop, seemed very articulate but rarely moved out of “radical-speak”. He said that when the Isis execution video emerged in January, Shamsuddin sent him a text telling him he might “know the voice”, which he took to hint that Dhar was the man overseeing the murders in the video and that it gave him “chills”.

He revealed that the extremists had other interests – Shamsuddin told him he was a fan of the Great British Bake Off but when Roberts asked if he was pleased that a Muslim, Nadiya Hussain, had won, he said he did not consider her to be Muslim.

Channel 4 head of documentaries, Nick Mirsky, said the programme “makes it clearer than ever how difficult it is for all of us to deal with the threat of extremism and extremists”, but also explored the “tensions between civil liberties and the need to protect the state”.