Boubaker El Hakim

Boubaker ben Habib ben al-Hakim (1 August 1983 - 26 November 2016), also known as Boubaker El Hakim, Abu Bakr bin Al-Habib Abdul Hakim , or by his nom de guerre Abou Mouqatel, was a Franco-Tunisian jihadist who was the highest ranking French officer in the Islamic State at the time of his death. He was killed by a drone on 26 November 2016 in the Syrian city of Raqqa.

Life

Early life and education Boubaker ben Habib El Hakim was born on 1 August 1983 in the 12th arrondissement of Paris. A salesman at Monoprix, he was raised by his mother among two younger sisters.

Returning to Paris in January 2003, he participated with Farid Benyettou in the development in the 19th arrondissement of a network for sending young jihadist volunteers to Iraq, known as the “Buttes-Chaumont network”.

At around the same time, while in a jihadist training camp near Baghdad, El Hakim was interviewed by an RTL Group journalist. El Hakim stated that: “I am from Paris 19th! All my friends in the 19th I tell them come and do jihad! I'm ready to blow myself up, set some dynamites and boom boom!".

Battle of Fallujah Accompanied by his younger brother Redouane, then aged 19, he settled in Tunisia, his parents' country of origin, where the regime of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali had just been overthrown. Tunisian Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou stated that Abu Bakr Al-Hakim was involved in the assassination of Brahmi, and in addition to his involvement in this assassination, he was also "involved in the case of weapons confiscation in Mnihla, Medenine, and Douar Hicher."

On 17 December 2014 in Syria, he already claimed responsibility, under the nom de guerre of Abou Mouqatil, for the double murder in an IS propaganda video: “Yes, tyrants, it is we who killed Chokri Belaïd and Mohamed Brahmi […] We will come back and kill many of you. You will not live in peace until Tunisia applies Islamic law”.

In an interview published on 30 March 2015 in the eighth issue of the English-speaking jihadist magazine Dabiq, El Hakim personally claimed responsibility for the murder of Mohamed Brahmi: “we stayed for four hours in front of this tyrant's house, we were waiting until 'When he left the house and got into the car, I killed him with ten bullets'. Subsequently, he joined the Amniyat, the intelligence service of the Islamic State. The DGSI suspected El Hakim of having planned in the fall of 2016, within an Islamic State cell responsible for external operations, half a dozen attacks which were to strike Europe and the Maghreb, including the members of the commando who were arrested in Strasbourg and Marseille on the night of 19 November 2016.

He was also suspected of being involved “in the design and management of the project” of the attack prepared by the Reda Kriket network, arrested on 24 March 2016 in Boulogne-Billancourt, then for having been in contact in October with the Syrian Jaber al-Bakr in Chemnitz. El Hakim later sponsored an attack carried out on 28 October 2016 on a police officer in Constantine, Algeria.

Death El Hakim was killed on 26 November 2016 the Pentagon announced that Abu Bakr Al-Hakim was killed in an airstrike by the United States in Raqqa, Syria. It was initially thought that he could have survived the strike, although he was later confirmed dead.