- Aseel Muthana, 17, joined his brother Nasser, 20, fighting for Isis in Syria
- Teenager was a member of the notorious DRG crew in Cardiff, friends say
- Mainly Muslim group has members as young as ten with 'knives and guns'
- 'They'd often be in fights, sometimes caused by race. 'They would call some of the white kids "pastey boys". Aseel was a senior member,' source said
- Local Imam says brothers shunned mosque after expressing 'political views'
- Labour MP says 1,500 British radicals may have gone to Syria to fight
A British teenager fighting jihad in Syria shoulder-to-shoulder with his brother was allegedly a senior member of a notorious predominantly Muslim gang who carry knives and guns, it emerged today.
Aseel Muthana, 17, who followed his older sibling Nasser to join Isis, has been described as a ringleader in the Docks Riverside Grangetown crew from Cardiff.
The gang is made up of around 15 youths as young as ten who 'carry knives, knuckledusters and guns' and are also said to target white rivals, they call 'pastey boys'.
Young recruit: 17-year-old Aseel Muthana was allegedly a member of a violent Cardiff gang before he fled to join his brother Nasser fighting for Isis in Syria
The DRG crew, as they are known locally, also produce their own rap videos filled with swearing and promoting violence.
Last week his brother and another friend Reyaad Khan, also from Cardiff, appeared in a shocking recruitment video aimed at luring jihadists to Syria and Iraq.
A school friend toldThe Sun: 'Aseel was a senior member. If you know of the group you would not go there at night — if they saw you they would probably start on you. They would often be in fights, sometimes caused by race.
'They would call some of the white kids "pastey boys".'
One Cardiff boy, who was attacked by members of the gang, said in an online post: 'They've got ages from 10 - 16 and most of them carry knives.. knuckle dusters.. a few with guns.
I was pinned down at 11 years of age in a lane and I was cut with a bottle up my arm and that was because they had beef with my cuzun (sic) and they couldn't get him'.
In February Aseel fled Britain to fight in Syria after telling his parents he was staying at his friend's house ahead of a maths exam at his school.
Cardiff link: Reyaad Khan and Aseel's brother Nasser Muthana appear in this Isis recruitment video encouraging others to fight jihad
School days: Third British jihadist Reyaad Khan having fun with friends in Cardiff before he fled to fight
But police then arrived at his home the following night after it emerged he had gained a second passport by lying about his age and was in Cyprus and about to sail to Syria.
His brother Nasser was a star medical student who secretly travelled to Syria from his family home in Cardiff despite being offered the opportunity to study medicine by four universities.
His family have not seen him since November 2013.
Furious father Ahmed Muthana, 57, said if his sons ever return to the UK, he would like to see them jailed.
He added that his sons have 'betrayed his family and betrayed Britain' - before insisting he had already binned family pictures of his boys because 'you don't keep the devil in your house.'
Mr Muthana, who moved to the UK from Yemen in the seventies and earned a living repairing televisions, collapsed and was rushed to hospital when he heard his second son had also gone to fight.
There are concerns about radicalisation problems in Cardiff after three young men from the area rushed to fight in Syria.
Former Cardiff councillor Mohammed Sarul Islam told BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning he did not believe young men in the city were being radicalised in mosques but instead some had been influenced by 'internet clerics.'
Sheikh Zane Abdo, imam of the South Wales Islamic Centre, told BBC Breakfast that Nasser and Aseel had been 'normal teenagers' before they went through a 'very strange period' when they started expressing 'certain views'.
'The brothers were normal teenagers, very well-spoken, very sincere, liked watching movies, did a lot of school, normal teenagers,' he said.
Pictured: Nasser's room in the family home in Cardiff where the brothers plotted how to take part in a holy war thousands of miles away in Syria
In shock: Nasser and Aseel's parents and youngest brother walk through their Cardiff estate. Their father has said they should be arrested and jailed if they return to the UK
'However, they went through a very strange period when they said they were becoming quite serious in their faith and then began to start to expressing certain views that were quite political, particularly the older brother.
Concerns: The Imam of the local mosque said the boys were 'normal teenagers' but both, especially Nasser (pictured) began to start to expressing certain views that were quite political
'Neither of them in the past year and a half to two years frequented this mosque or attended any of the sermons or any of my classes that I have been giving for the past three and a half years.'
He said he regretted the publicity that the video had attracted.
'I guarantee that many young people who are very susceptible to this type of message will have watched that video and maybe have been encouraged to now go and follow in the footsteps of Nasser and his brother, which is a real problem, the fact that a platform has been given to this video, that really shouldn't have been given.'
He added that Reyaad Khan's mother had approached him, 'crying her eyes out', after he had given a lecture on extremism.
'Reyaad Khan's mother approached me several months ago. I did a lecture on extremism, on Jihad, several months ago, in a particular mosque and she came up to me afterwards, she was crying her eyes out, she said 'What can I have done, what can I do?
'I tried to console her. This happened several months ago.'
He said he had spoken out, warning young people not to do the same.
'I expressed how young people should not be going. We have done this already, we have done the work, we have spoken out several months ago, way before the media even got a whiff of what was going on,' he said.
FORMER MI6 BOSS SAYS IT'S 'IMPOSSIBLE' TO TRACK EVERY BRITON FIGHTING IN SYRIA AND HE BELIEVES 300 HAVE ALREADY COME BACK TO UK
A former director of MI6 has warned intelligence services faced an 'impossible' task of tracking the hundreds of Britons who have returned to UK after fighting in Syria.
Richard Barrett, a former head of counter-terrorism at MI6, estimated 'possibly up to 300 people have come back to the UK' already.
His comments came after it emerged that around 500 Britons had travelled to Syria and Iraq - a higher estimate than the 400 claimed by Foreign Secretary William Hague.
Richard Barrett, a former director of MI6, has warned intelligence services faced an 'impossible' task of tracking the hundreds of Britons who have returned to UK after fighting in Syria
Mr Barrett told the BBC: 'Clearly they'll have to prioritise and they'll have to choose those that they think are likely to pose the greatest risk.
'Beyond that I think they'll have to rely very much on members of the community and other people expressing their concern and worry about the behaviour of perhaps their returned friend or family member.'
Mr Barrett said that while recruiting networks across Europe suggested of greater radicalisation than people just going on their own, it did not necessarily indicate that people would progress from fighting in Syria to being a terrorist at home.
Police across the UK have made 65 Syria-related arrests over the last 18 months, including 40 in the first three months of this year alone.
Sir Peter Fahy, who leads on the Prevent counter-terrorism strategy for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said 'huge amounts of material' was being taken down from the internet every week as part of the effort to stop people being radicalised.
But others say the figures are much higher.
Birmingham MP Khalid Mahmood told Sky News: 'I imagine 1,500 certainly would be the lower end. If you look across the whole of the country, there's been a number of people going across.
'Originally you had the British Syrians settled here who wanted to go back and play a part, then you had the Kurdish community, then almost two years ago you had the young British Muslim community going across - so if you add all that up you've got serious figures that we need to look at.
'Those will come back - certainly more than we are saying at the moment - and we do need to look at that.
'So we need to look at exactly how this is happening, what our border controls are like and we really need to bolster those border controls in order to ensure that we see the people coming through and deal with them.'
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