Loading details…
Loading details…
Artist
Denis Mamadou Gerhard Cuspert (born 18 October 1975), also known by his stage name Deso Dogg and his nom de guerre Abu Talha al-Almani, is an Afro-German member of the Islamic State and former rapper. Cuspert ended his rap career in 2010, converted to Islam and took the name Abou Maleeq. Cuspert left Germany in 2012 for Egypt and eventually Syria, where he fought with jihadist anti-government forces in the Syrian Civil War, under the nom de guerre of Abu Talha Al-Almani (meaning Abu Talha the German). He was wounded during fighting in the northern-Syrian town of Azaz in an air-strike conducted by the Syrian Army. In 2014 he gave his oath of allegiance to Islamist-Jihadi group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The United States Department of State added Cuspert to its list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists on 9 February 2015,[2] and the United Nations Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee designated him on 11 February 2015. Early life and education Cuspert was born in Kreuzberg, Berlin on October 18, 1975. His father, Richard Luc-Giffard, was a Ghanaian national who had been deported before Cuspert was born. His mother, Sigrid Cuspert, was a white German. He was later raised in Charlottenburg, Moabit and Schöneberg. His mother remarried an African-American U.S. Army officer with whom Cuspert had ongoing conflicts. He had a troubled youth and spent some time in a juvenile detention center. In 1995 he began a rapping career with varying success, as he got increa