Personnel files from Isis appear to reveal the names of a number of previously unknown British foreign fighters who have travelled to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamist terror group.



Fourteen Isis recruitment forms which set out the names, dates of birth, home towns and recruiter details, were passed to the Guardian from German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. While half of the names appear to be known to the public, a number of them, if genuine, seem to be new additions to the roster of hundreds of British fighters who are understood to have travelled to the Middle East to join the organisation in Iraq and Syria.



One foreign fighter listed in the documents alongside a UK mobile number is believed to have lived in Arsenal, North London. The Guardian has as yet been unable to make contact with the relatives of another as yet unknown young Italian whose last known address was a short distance away in Finsbury Park, London.



At least half of the names in the personnel forms explicitly dealing with British foreign fighters are well known to the public. They include the names of all but one of a group of six jihadis from Portsmouth who came to be known as the Pompey lads.

Sometimes self-described as the “Bangladeshi Bad Boys”, the most infamous figure among them was Ifthekar Jaman, who gained notoriety after giving an interview to BBC’s Newsnight in November 2013 in which he told reporter Richard Watson, “I am Isis. This is the group I am with. We are trying to establish the law of God, the law of Allah”. He was subsequently killed in fighting a month later and became a poster child for UK radicals.

Jaman’s form lists his date of entry into Syria as 9 May 2013. Privately educated, Jaman managed to inspire five friends from Portsmouth to travel to the war-torn country who were all captured on camera as they walked through Gatwick airport in October 2013.

One of those five was his cousin Asad Uzzaman, whose form was also in the cache. The Guardian managed to confirm that a UK mobile number on Uzzaman’s form belongs to a family member. The number was answered by a young woman who confirmed Uzzaman’s date of birth. He was understood to have been killed during the summer of last year. The only one of the Portsmouth group who is thought to still be alive is Mashudur Choudhury, who is serving a four-year prison term after returning to the UK. His details also appeared to be among the forms.

Some biographical details in the forms are not consistent with known information. Ruhul Amin, a Scottish jihadi who appeared in a recruitment video for Isis, was from Aberdeen although the form lists his place of residence as Cardiff. His fellow fighter, Reyaad Khan, was from Cardiff; both were killed in a drone strike launched by the RAF in September. It was the first publicly admitted drone attack which explicitly targeted UK citizens.

Another British citizen in the documents is Raphael Hostey, 23, from Manchester, who is sometimes known online as “al-Britani Afro”. He left his wife and child to travel to Syria in 2013 accompanied by two fellow students of Liverpool John Moores University, Mohammed Javeed and Khalil Raoufi.

A 2015 study by global security firm the Soufan group found that Isis had managed to gain between 27,000 and 31,000 foreign recruits from more than 86 countries.