Junaid Hussain
ISIL propagandist and hacker
About Junaid Hussain
Lived 1994 – 2015 (aged 20–21). Junaid Hussain was a British and Pakistani hacker.
Junaid Hussain ( 1994 – 25 August 2015) was a British black hat hacker and propagandist under the nom de guerre of Abu Hussain al-Britani who supported the Islamic State (IS). Hussain, who was raised in Birmingham in a family originally from Pakistan, was jailed in 2012 for hacking Tony Blair's accounts and posting his personal information online. Hussain left the UK around 2013 for Syria.
Hussain was killed in 2015 via airstrike.
Hacking and propagandizing Hussain was known as TriCk from the disbanded hacking group TeaMp0isoN. He was a key figure in a group of Islamist computer hackers who call themselves the Cyber Caliphate. The Islamist hackers were involved in defacing French websites during the 2015 Île-de-France attacks and the Twitter feeds of the U.S. Central Command, Newsweek and the International Business Times.
In March 2015, Hussain released a list of U.S. military personnel requesting that IS followers execute people on the list. While Hussain claimed to have breached US Department of Defense servers, the FBI assessed that the list was cobbled together from news articles, social media posts, and public records.
Hussain was in online contact with one of the gunmen behind the Curtis Culwell Center attack of May 2015. Before the incident, an attacker posted online statements on Twitter, in which he requested others to follow Hussain's account. After the shooting occurred, Hussain wrote: "Allahu Akbar!!!! 2 of our brothers just opened fire."
The Sunday Times reported that US officials intended to assassinate Hussain, listing him as the third highest IS target on the Pentagon's "kill list", behind Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Mohammed Emwazi, due to his role in inspiring international lone wolf terrorism.
US government sources reported Hussain, along with two of his bodyguards, was killed in a drone strike on a car at a petrol station in Raqqa, the Islamic State's Syrian capital, on 24 August 2015. Hussain, 21 at the time of his reported death, was married to Sally Jones, 45, a fellow Briton who had joined IS. She denied his death through IS-linked Twitter accounts.
Hussain and his British wife, Sally-Anne Jones, regularly used her son from a prior relationship as a human shield to prevent drone attacks. On the occasion when he was killed, he had ventured out without the child. It was reported that Hussain's location was discovered after he clicked on a compromised Internet link sent by an undercover agent on the Surespot messaging app. Jones later confirmed that Hussain had been killed. As well as Jones and his stepson, Hussain left behind a second wife, a Syrian national he married a few weeks after Jones's arrival in Raqqa in late 2013. Jones and her twelve-year-old son were killed in 2017.
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Important facts
Family & relationships
People in Junaid Hussain's life
Named in this biography and alive at the same time
Contemporaries
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Frequently asked questions
Who was Junaid Hussain?
ISIL propagandist and hacker
When was Junaid Hussain born?
Junaid Hussain was born in 1994 in Birmingham.
When did Junaid Hussain die?
Junaid Hussain died on 25 August 2015 in Raqqa, Syria.
What was Junaid Hussain's occupation?
Junaid Hussain was a hacker.
What nationality was Junaid Hussain?
Junaid Hussain was British and Pakistani.
Sources & further reading
Cite this page
APA: Biography.guide. (2026). Junaid Hussain. https://biography.guide/junaid-hussain/
MLA: "Junaid Hussain." Biography.guide, https://biography.guide/junaid-hussain/.
Chicago: "Junaid Hussain." Biography.guide. https://biography.guide/junaid-hussain/.
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