Siberian featured in Islamic State beheading video is part of group’s propaganda efforts aimed at Russia
Dec. 15, 2015 5:30 a.m. ET
MOSCOW—For Russia, it was a shock: A blue-eyed Siberian with shaggy brown hair raged against his homeland in an Islamic State video before slicing the throat of a fellow Russian accused of being a spy.
The executioner, identified by Russian media and his friends as a 28-year-old named Anatoly Zemlyanka from the city of Noyabrsk, has risen to infamy in Russia since Islamic State released the undated video from Syria on Dec. 2.
Russian authorities, while not confirming his identity in the propaganda video, have put him on Interpol’s wanted list. Russian media have dubbed him Jihadi Tolik, based on the Russian nickname for Anatoly, in describing his apparent transformation from Siberian college student to the Slavic face of Islamic State brutality.
Mr. Zemlyanka’s image has spurred comparisons to Jihadi John, or Mohammed Emwazi—the British militant whose appearances in videos presiding over the beheadings of Western hostages while leveling demands at President Barack Obama made him a prime propaganda tool for Islamic State. But instead of speaking English and condemning Mr. Obama, Mr. Zemlyanka is speaking in Russian and berating Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Listen to me, Putin, you dog, and let your henchmen hear me too!” Mr. Zemlyanka says in the video. “Before your arrival, the Assad regime bombed us, then America bombed us with its cowardly coalition, and now you’re bombing us. But nothing has come of it, apart from the fortitude and conviction that we’re on the side of truth.”
Islamic State is increasingly pointing its propaganda apparatus at Russia, as the Kremlin steps up its military support for Syrian leaderBashar al-Assad. The campaign appears aimed at raising Russian fears of possible further retribution from Islamic State, particularly after the suspected Oct. 31 bombing of a Russian charter flighttraveling to St. Petersburg from Egypt’s Sharm El Sheikh.
“If, before, they cut off the heads of people from Western governments…today for [Islamic State] the main enemy has become Russia,” said Stanislav Ivanov, senior researcher at the Russian global-affairs institute IMEMO.
The Islamist extremist group has long sought to exploit symbolism in well-produced propaganda videos such as the one featuring Mr. Zemlyanka, who Russian media outlets say went to Syria to join Islamic State two years ago. The images of a Russian beheading a fellow citizen at the direction of Islamic State in a far-off land have shocked Russians.
“This is straight out of the Islamic State playbook—creating videos that scare people and potentially creating a brand out of the individual doing it,” saysCharlie Winter, senior research associate at Georgia State University. “These kinds of things are very carefully thought through to maximize impact.”
Mr. Winter said the extent of Mr. Zemlyanka’s transformation into the Russian equivalent of Jihadi John would depend on whether Islamic State possesses more Russian hostages and whether the Siberian extremist is shown killing them in other videos.
Worries about homegrown extremism have been mounting in Russia. The case of Moscow State University student Varvara Karaulova, who authorities say made contact with an Islamic State fighter online and tried to join him in Syria, has dominated headlines here in recent months.
Authorities detained Ms. Karaulova on the border between Turkey and Syria in June and repatriated her to Russia. The 20-year-old student is now awaiting trial in Moscow on charges of participation in a terrorist group. In an interview with a Moscow newspaper, her mother said Ms. Karaulova had fallen in love with the Islamic State fighter online but denied the charges.
Mr. Zemlyanka has triggered the same fears. Interpol published a high-priority “red notice” for his arrest on Friday. The notice said that Russian authorities had charged him with participation in an illegal armed formation.
Russian media have depicted Mr. Zemlyanka as a relatively reserved and unremarkable student from the Yamal region’s city of Noyabrsk, a frosty oil-and-gas hub a few hundred miles from the Arctic Circle.
Friends and acquaintances told Russian state television that he liked to listen to the German industrial-heavy metal band Rammstein, worked out obsessively and devoted much of his time to martial arts. Russian tabloid website Life News printed an old photo that appeared to show Mr. Zemlyanka doing the Nazi “Sieg heil” salute and quoted a school friend saying that he at one point toyed with far-right beliefs.
According to acquaintances speaking to Russian media outlets, he underwent a transformation after moving to the Siberian city of Tyumen in 2006 to finish college, where he studies customs affairs. He converted to Islam, renamed himself Tolik Taymullah—a mix of his Russian diminutive and an Arabic name that means servant of god—and ultimately departed for Syria in 2013.
Ksenya Lisyanskaya, a classmate who studied with Mr. Zemlyanka in both Noyabrsk and Tyumen, said she never noticed any aggression or cruelty. She said she knew him as a regular, warm person but added that they were not close friends.
He grew more somber after his conversion to Islam, she said. “He changed, he retreated somewhere inside himself,” Ms. Lisyanskayasaid. Still, she didn’t expect to find him on television as an Islamic State executioner. “I am in shock, how else can you describe this situation?”
According to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors and tracks radical groups online, the Islamic State media office for the Raqqa province released the Dec. 2 video. In the footage, a bearded Mr. Zemlyanka appears, threatening to kill Russian children and destroy Russian homes in retribution for Muslim deaths in Syria.
“Blood for blood, and destruction for destruction,” he vows.
The victim appears in an orange jumpsuit on his knees and introduces himself as 23-year-old Magomed Khasiyev from Russia’s Republic of Chechnya before saying that Russian security services had coerced him into going to Syria as an informant.
Family members and officials told Russian news outlets that Mr. Khasiyev was born to ethnic Russian parents as Yevgeny Yudin and later adopted from an orphanage by a Chechen family. It wasn’t immediately clear how Mr. Khasiyev ended up in Syria, or whether there was any truth to the on-tape confession given under duress.
The video’s grim aesthetic closely mirrors that of footage of Mr. Emwazi, who appeared in videos showing the executions of American and British hostages including journalist James Foley last year. U.S. officials said in November they were “reasonably certain” Mr. Emwazi had been killed in a drone strike.
The Russian video has had less impact than Mr. Emwazi’s tapes because of the profile of the victim. The deaths of Mr. Emwazi’s victims—Western journalists and aid workers—elicited public outrage and heartbreak. In Russia, uncertainty regarding Mr. Zemlyanka’s victim, Mr. Khasiyev, has limited the public sympathy.
In an interview with Russian state television, family members denied that Mr. Khasiyev had been fighting for Islamic State. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said in a statement released on Instagram that Mr. Khasiyev wasn’t part of any group in Syria aimed at “neutralizing bandits posing a real threat to Russia.”
Mr. Kadyrov added: “If [Khasiyev] was not an IS fighter, those guilty of his execution will receive their deserved punishment where they least expect it.”
Russian officials apart from Mr. Kadyrov have not commented on the matter. The Kremlin and Russia’s security service didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Ivanov, the senior researcher at IMEMO, said Islamic State could be warning Russian security services against trying to infiltrate its ranks, while also trying to reach out to more radically-inclined Russian recruits.
But Mr. Ivanov said the basic message was the same as Jihadi John’s: “They’re putting the emphasis on, ‘Among you there are people who are ready to serve us and chop off people’s heads.’”
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