Fitim Lladrovci: “I want to create an Islamic State in Kosovo and I’d gladly die in support of it”

Four years have passed since a young Islamic State fighter from Kosovo witnessed one of the organisation’s most abhorrent killings. Fitim Lladrovci was 24 when he saw a Syrian tied to a stake and blown up with a rocket-propelled grenade.

“It was certainly not the worst thing I saw among many executions, beheadings and burnings,” he said, reflecting in Pristina, capital of Kosovo, on his continued loyalty to Isis. “Even kids got used to seeing such things.”

Lladrovci never faced prosecution after his first 20-day trip to Syria in 2013 ANTHONY LOYD FOR THE TIMES

The killer was Lavdrim Muhaxheri, an infamous Kosovo Albanian who was designated an international terrorist threat before being killed by a drone. His identity and video of the murder placed Kosovans at the heart of the jihadists’ foreign fighter entourage and alerted European security services to an emerging