LONDON: A member of the Daesh gang dubbed “the Beatles” due to their British origin is suspected of recruiting as many as 25 fighters from his home area of west London.
Notorious terrorist Alexanda Kotey, who is in custody in the US awaiting trial over the beheadings of Western hostages in Syria, is suspected of having radicalized dozens of young men.
The group was known as the “Westway warriors” because they lived near a major motorway flyover called the Westway in the London suburb of Ladbroke Grove.
Details about members of the terror gang have been popularized in a new BBC film based on investigations by Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper.
It was revealed that the number of fighters inspired to travel to Syria is almost double what was previously documented. 
The fate of some of the fighters is unknown, raising concerns that they could slip under the radar and return to Britain to plan and conduct attacks.
Kotey, 37, has hired Sabrina Shroff, the American defense lawyer who is helping Abu Hamza. 
The Finsbury Park Mosque hate preacher — who was sentenced to life without parole on terrorism charges — has lodged an appeal to be released from maximum-security prison ADX Florence in Colorado on humanitarian grounds.
Kotey and El-Shafee Elsheikh, 32, another captured member of the “Westway warriors,” are due to go on trial in January next year.
If convicted they could face life imprisonment, likely in solitary confinement and without the opportunity for parole.
The BBC documentary, “Secrets of an Isis Smartphone,” follows a 2019 investigation by the Sunday Times that tracked Britons in the Iraq and Syria conflicts through video and photos recovered from a Samsung smartphone. 
The Galaxy phone is thought to have been used by up to four British Daesh members. Files on the device were uploaded to a hard drive shared with a Sunday Times reporter by Western-backed forces in Syria after Daesh lost its territory. 
Two of the phone’s regular users — Choukri Ellekhlifi, 22, and Fatlum Shalaku, 20 — were among Kotey’s Ladbroke Grove group. 
Shalaku’s older brother Flamur, 23, also joined Daesh from west London. They were all killed in combat or suicide bombings.
Kotey was previously thought to have recruited around a dozen Daesh fighters from his west London suburb.
But Ghino Parker, who was a youth worker for the local council when Britons were regularly traveling to join Daesh, told the BBC that many more young men had been “lost” to the terror group.
“There were definitely young people that came through our service years ago that we lost to Syria,” she said. “Actually, the last number that I heard ... is that we lost around 26 from west London.”
Kotey and Elsheikh were captured in Syria in January 2018. They have been stripped of their citizenship and were flown to the US in October 2020. 
They pleaded not guilty to eight charges each of the torture and murder of Western hostages. The pair are being held in solitary confinement in Alexandria, Virginia, where they are awaiting trial.