The "American boy," who says his name is Yousuf, calls US President Donald Trump a "puppet of the Jews" in the seven-minute video. He warns that "the airstrikes against [Daesh] will move to the West" and that "the war has just begun" against Washington and allied nations.
"My father's an American soldier who fought the mujahideen in Iraq," the boy says in the tape. He claimed to have arrived in a Daesh-controlled area of Iraq two years ago. "I didn't know much about Islam except the name. When me and mom came to the Islamic State two years ago, we started learning the correct Islamic creed," he says in the video.
"My message to Trump, the puppet of the Jews: Allah has promised us victory and promised you defeat," the child proclaims. "his battle is not going to end in Raqqa or Mosul, it’s going to end in your lands. By the will of Allah, we will have victory, so get ready, for the fighting has just begun."
This the first time a child purported to be American has been used in Daesh propaganda, though the extremists have been increasingly using children in their materials. The video surfaced a day after the terrorist group published photos of a boy who appears to be in his early teens, claiming that he is a suicide bomber in Iraq.
Obtained by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a group that monitors jihadists, the video also shows Yousuf playing with a seven-year-old boy identified as Abdullah, who is said to be from the town of Sinjar in north Iraq, which since August 2014 has been under Daesh control. Footage of the two boys playing in a deserted playground is interspersed with images of Daesh militants preparing for battle and the children learning how to fire a sniper rifle.
The US State Department says it is "depraved" to use children in terrorist propaganda, though they have not confirmed the video’s authenticity or the boy’s identity. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said she has not seen the video and that "I know that some folks have seen this video. It purports to show a child who, as I understand it, appears to be a young boy. I can't confirm that video. I can't confirm if that child is an American."
She continued, "First and foremost, any child used in that capacity in a [Daesh] video regardless of what is being done is sick. It's sick and it's depraved, and we've seen that time and time again from [Daesh]. We've seen [Daesh] as they have recruited children, as we have used them — as they have used them as human shields. We've seen [Daesh] use children the ages of some of our own children here as suicide bombers, as homicide bombers. It's sick, it's depraved, and it is another example of just how wrong and how evil [Daesh] is."
