The British Hacker Who Became the Islamic State's Chief Terror Cybercoach: A Profile of Junaid...

"Junaid Hussain (born circa 1994) was a second-generation British national whose family hailed from the Pakistani side of Kashmir. When he was growing up, his family lived in the Small Heath district of Birmingham, an area heavily populated by South Asians with the second-highest crime rate in Birmingham.1 Before he became radicalized, Hussain’s family moved out of that area and into Kings Heath, an area often touted as a highly desirable place to live in the United Kingdom.2 It was while living in this leafy neighborhood that Hussain’s worldview changed.b

His father was a respectable member of the British Pakistani community. He ran private hire cabs in the Birmingham area when Hussain was growing up. The senior Hussain was considered an “honorable,” “hardworking,” and “well-spoken” man by family friends interviewed by the author.3 Junaid Hussain, in contrast, seemed to be a person of few words.

Junaid Hussain’s friends, including individuals who interacted with him in Syria, paint a picture of a reserved yet passionate young man. According to a family friend who knew Hussain from a young age, “Hussain wasn’t somebody you had a lot of interaction with … he wasn’t that kind of an outgoing person as such, he was of limited words … always seemed withdrawn like, you know, when somebody has a lot on their mind and … they’re really into deep thought … he wasn’t one to hold conversations for long periods of time on any particular topic so it was very sort of piecemeal and short, unless he was talking about technology and then he’d have more of an attention span.”"