Deso Dogg, ISIS' 'gangsta jihadi', killed in Syria clashes, terror watchdog says

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A German rapper dubbed a “gangsta jihadi” for joining the Islamic State -- where he eventually seduced an FBI translator -- appears to have been killed in Syria after a pro-ISIS media group released pictures purportedly showing his bloody corpse.

Denis Cuspert, who found modest fame a decade ago as “Deso Dogg,” a rapper who once toured with American rapper DMX, was killed Wednesday in clashes in eastern Syria’s Deir ez-Zour province, The Guardian reported, citing a watchdog that monitors terrorist media.

The SITE Intelligence Group said Cuspert’s death was announced by the Wafa Media Foundation, a pro-ISIS organization. Cuspert, who went by the name Abu Talha al-Almani, has been announced as dead in the past, but then has appeared in numerous ISIS propaganda videos, including one where he triumphantly hoisted the severed head of an infidel.

In this screengrab from a video believed to have been shot in November, Cuspert holds the severed head of a victim of ISIS. (Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently)

“There was this whole subculture that these guys were buying into: a macho world of clandestine behavior beyond social norms,” Shiraz Maher, the deputy director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence at King’s College London, told The Guardian.

“A lot of the appeal to these people was based on masculinity and bravado rather than something ideological or religious,” he added.

Cuspert previously dubbed the black-clad terror army’s top recruiter, trading on his credibility with a generation of young, disaffected loners.

In 2014, Cuspert seduced a turncoat translator who had been part of a Detroit-based FBI team that set out to track him down. Daniela Greene fell in love with her quarry online and left for the small northern Syrian city of al-Rai armed with an AK-47. She eventually left, returned to the U.S. and served two years in prison before her story got out.

Long before Cuspert became an ISIS leader, he was a petty criminal whose rap lyrics revealed a dark and twisted mind. The son of a Ghanian father who left Cuspert’s German mother, he recorded three albums for a Berlin-based gangsta rap label and scored a minor hit with "Willkommen in meiner Welt" (Welcome to my World) in 2010.

“Welcome to my world full of hate and blood,” went part of the song. “Children’s souls weep softly when the black angels sing.”

Cuspert recorded three albums and flirted with stardom before leaving Germany to join ISIS.

Cuspert reportedly converted to Islam in 2010 following a near-fatal car accident. In 2012, he left Germany for Egypt, before eventually making his way to Syria where he joined Al Qaeda. When Islamic State broke away from the terror group behind 9/11, Cuspert pledged his loyalty to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Fox News’ Benjamin Weinthal contributed to this report.