The Dubliner reportedly killed on Friday while driving a vehicle loaded with bombs towards the forces attacking the Islamic State-held city of Mosul, lived recently in a small cottage down a quiet road beside Ardagh, Co Longford.
Terence “Khalid” Kelly (50), from the Liberties in Dublin, rented the house from early 2013 until late 2015, according to one local.
The small house in a farmyard was down a lane off a byroad in the middle of Ardagh, one of Co Longford’s most picturesque villages.
“He was a quiet guy who sometimes came into the local shop. No one knew him at all. He never came into the pub,” said one local.
The news that an Isis jihadist who had died in a suicide bombing in Iraq had been living in their village was a major topic of conversation in the village yesterday. “It’s a bit of a shock to everyone, to be honest,” said one local.
People attending Mass on Sunday, another said, talked about how shocked they were to discover “who had been in our midst”.
The house Kelly was staying in was rented from a local family. “It’s down a byroad in the middle of the village, a quiet, secluded spot. Probably ideal for him.”
Kelly, who converted to Islam while serving time in jail in Saudi Arabia for dealing in alcohol, was married to a woman from Pakistan who is believed to be living in England.
‘Didn’t mix’
“He didn’t mix,” said a man from Ardagh who did not want to be identified.” He had a family, a wife and children, that came and went. Mostly he kept to himself.”
Another man who has a business in the area and is concerned about security, said he had been told about a bearded man who was seen jogging around the roads near Ardagh last summer. “It was the summer but it was dark, so you’d be talking 10.30 [pm].”
Isis issued a statement saying Kelly, whom they called Abu Osama Irelandi, was killed after he drove an armoured truck full of explosives at an Iraqi militia group outside the Iraqi city of Mosul on Friday.
The group released a picture of Kelly standing in front of a vehicle with a Kalashnikov rifle. Another picture purported to show the moment Kelly’s vehicle exploded.
While it said he had killed off "dozens" of troops from the Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU), a spokesman for the PMU told The Irish Times that there were "no deaths, thank God" from the Irishman's suicide attack.
Kelly drove a DIY armoured vehicle laden with explosives towards PMU Iraqi forces on Friday before blowing himself up. “We had eight injured troops from shrapnel and blast wave,” the PMU spokesman said.
“He was stopped with the second RPG7 that got the vehicle but was close enough that shrapnel reached some troops not sheltered in vehicles.”
‘Ticking time bomb’
The head imam of the Irish Islamic Centre in Blanchardstown, Dublin, Shaykh Umar Al-Qadri, said his response to hearing of Kelly's death was a feeling of relief. Kelly was, he said, " a ticking time bomb", and his death meant that the Irish Muslim community would no longer have to worry about his committing an atrocity here.
“He deserves to be in hell because he probably killed innocent people,” he said. “Yes, he had a family, but at the same time, he is not now going to bring up his sons as jihadists.”
Kelly had been very isolated within the Muslim community and the community was relieved that he was no longer a threat. Dr Al-Qadri said he had never met Kelly but did see him once outside the GPO in Dublin, with some young Muslims who would have known of his extremist views, offering to answer questions about Islam to members of the public. “I found that problematic.”
Kelly is said to have grown up in the Liberties area of Dublin and to have trained to be a nurse. In an interview given in London to The Irish Times in 2004, he spoke about his extremist views and why he supported Islamic terrorism.
‘By the sword’
The September 11th attacks in the US were “the most amazing thing that happened in recent times”, he said. “It drew a line in the sand, where you are with the Muslim side or you are with the other side.”
“Osama bin Laden speaks with the voice given to him by the Koran,” he said. “He wants to see what I want to see, world-wide domination over all beliefs, secularists, pagans, Christians, Jews. Islam can be spread in two ways, by the word and by the sword.”
Kelly said that after attending the Francis Street Christian Brothers School until he was 16, he left to work in pubs. The one that stood out in his memory, he said, was Doheny & Nesbitt on Baggot Street. The people he met in the pub prompted him to go back to school, which he did. He went to London after doing his Leaving Certificate, trained as a nurse, married, and then went to Saudi Arabia to work.
After being jailed for dealing in illegal alcohol sales, he converted to Islam, he said. “Before, I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel about alcohol, about women walking in the street half-naked, about homosexuality and paedophilia, but now I know, now I have all the answers. The Koran answers all the questions. It tells us how to live, how to conduct our lives.”
After being deported to the UK from Saudi Arabia in 2002, Kelly became the public face of an organisation, al-Muhajiroun, that most Muslims in Britain regarded as dangerous.
He also travelled to Ireland, where he appeared on the Late Late Show and freely expressed his extremist views. He was kept under Garda surveillance. He regularly offered to give his views about Islam to passersby on Dublin's O'Connell Street at weekends, standing at a stall outside the GPO. His Twitter account was suspended some time ago.
Last year, after Dr Al-Qadri had organised an anti-Isis demonstration, he had a Whatsapp engagement with Kelly, who contacted him to ask why he was organising a demonstration against his own “brothers and sisters in Isis who were doing such great work against Satan”. Dr Al-Qadri told Kelly he was not surprised by his views, and that he had always been an extremist. When he asked Kelly where he was, Kelly said he was abroad. That was in November.
