Denis Mamadou Gerhard Cuspert (18 October 1975 – 17 January 2018), also known by his stage name Deso Dogg and his nom de guerre Abu Talha al-Almani, was a German rapper who became a member of the Islamic State. Cuspert ended his rap career in 2010, converted to Islam and took on the new Islamic name Abou Maleeq. He 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 Air Force. 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, and the United Nations Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee designated him on 11 February 2015. In January 2018, the pro-ISIL Wafa' Media Foundation announced his death during clashes in the town of Gharanij. Early life and education Cuspert was born in Kreuzberg, Berlin on 18 October 1975. His father, Richard Luc-Giffard, was a Ghanaian national who had been deported before Cuspert was born. His mother, Sigrid Cuspert, is German. He was later raised in Charlottenburg, Moabit and Schöneberg. His mother remarried a 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 increasingly involved in street trouble and eventually in crime. In 2002, he adopted the name Deso Dogg and began recording with the German rapper Charnell, a gangster rapper from Berlin. Deso Dogg was, at that time, under detention in an open prison system for minor offenders. By mid-2004, he was repeatedly arrested for various new offenses, including violations of the German Opium Act. Consequently, his probation was revoked and Deso Dogg had to serve time in the Tegel Prison. He was in a criminal gang called the "36 Boys", which was based in Kreuzberg, Berlin. The 36 Boys got in violent confrontations with other immigrant street gangs. "I always fought for 36," Cuspert told a reporter of the Exberliner named Robert Rigney. "I bled for 36. I was stabbed for