MELBOURNE, AUS. —
#BREAKING: There are unconfirmed reports Australian teenager Jake Bilardi has carried out a suicide bombing for Islamic State in Iraq.
— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) March 11, 2015
Story developing… The pale white kid dubbed ‘Britain’s white jihadi’ by the UK press, is reportedly a teenager from Melbourne’s northern suburbs, SBS is reporting.
He’s allegedly a math genius and a former student at Craigieburn Second College. He is 18-years-old and his name is ‘Jake.’ His family asked FairFax to not release his full name.
From SBS:
He dropped out of high school last year after converting to Islam and bought a one way ticket to Istanbul, before travelling to Iraq and Syria to fight for the so-called caliphate.
Last December a picture emerged on Twitter showing the teen sitting between two bearded men and holding an assault rifle.
He was wrongly identified as British after his photograph hit Twitter, and a user identified the young man “Jonathan Edwards”. The tweet said he had “applied for Ucas (Britain’s Universities and Colleges Admissions Service) to [sic] late and wasn’t accepted in any university, so he joined the Islamic state”.
(School Photo, Credit: Fairfax)