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By Jack Moore

November 5, 2014 12:11 GMT
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Germany's most prominent jihadi operating in Syria and Iraq, Denis Cuspert, otherwise known as 'Deso Dogg'.(Twitter / @APHClarkson)

German rapper Denis Cuspert, otherwise known by his stage name of "Deso Dogg", has appeared in an Islamic State (Isis) beheading video.

According to Deutsche Welle, it is not clear whether Cuspert committed the killings in the video but he is shown holding the head of an opponent of the terror group. He says that the beheading victims had chosen to fight against IS and "that's why they received the death penalty".

Cuspert, who now goes by the nomme de guerre of Abu Talha al-Amani, appears in the video speaking his mother tongue, in an attempt to attract German Salafists and impressionable, young Germans.

There were reports earlier this year that Cuspert was killed while fighting in Syria but this video appears to contradict this claim.

The authenticity of the video, released by Syrian activists in the country's Dair as-Saur province, is however yet to be verified.

Cuspert is a Muslim convert who holds previous prison convictions and was born to a German mother and a Ghanaian father in Berlin.

A report by the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has shown that hundreds of young Germans who have made the journey to Syria to fight in the four-year-long civil war for jihadi groups are mainly young males who have failed to finish school.

Some 6% of those jihadists only finished further school training and only 2% went into further education after school.

Many of the German jihadis flocking to Syria have been radicalised in the Salafist scene within Germany which has seen support grow in cities such as Wuppertal, where nightly "Sharia police" patrols have been ordering people to stop gambling, drinking, and clubbing.

Another famous German jihadist to join the fighting in Syria is footballer Burak Karan, who represented Germany's national youth teams seven times with stars such as Sami Khedira and Kevin-Prince Boateng.