REVEALED: ISIS Beheader 'Jihadi John' Is A 26-Year-Old Graduate From London
According to reports he is a 26-year-old west Londoner and university graduate, who was given the monicker ‘Jihadi John’ by a group of his hostages.
By Sadho Ram — 27 Feb 2015, 02:06 PM
A British man has been identified as the knife-wielding militant who appears in Islamic State (ISIS) videos claiming responsibility for the beheadings of US, British and other hostages, the Guardian reported via the Washington Post on 26 February
The Guardian understands that Mohammad Emwazi, a 26-year-old west Londoner and university graduate, is the militant. He had been given the monicker “Jihadi John” by a group of his hostages, who described him as part of an Isis cell they named the “the Beatles”.
theguardian.com
The Washington Post and the BBC have both named the man they say is 'Jihadi John'. This is from the Washington Post:
Screengrab from Islamic State video that showed killing of US-Israeli hostage Steven Sotloff.
Image via guim.co.ukThe world knows him as “Jihadi John,” the masked man with a British accent who has beheaded several hostages held by the Islamic State and who taunts audiences in videos circulated widely online.
But his real name, according to friends and others familiar with his case, is Mohammed Emwazi, a Briton from a well-to-do family who grew up in West London and graduated from college with a degree in computer programming. He is believed to have traveled to Syria around 2012 and to have later joined the Islamic State, the group whose barbarity he has come to symbolize.
The UK security services knew his identity, however, they chose not to disclose his name earlier for operational reasons
Emwazi first appeared in a video last August, when he apparently killed the American journalist James Foley.
He was later thought to have been pictured in the videos of the beheadings of US journalist Steven Sotloff, British aid worker David Haines, British taxi driver Alan Henning, and American aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, also known as Peter.
In each of the videos, the militant appeared dressed in a black robe with a black balaclava covering all but his eyes and top of his nose.
Emwazi guarded western hostages and handled negotiations with their families. By all accounts he is a ruthless killer who has shown little compunction about his gory, on-screen murders.
Emwazi arrived in Britain as a young boy, aged six, after being born in Kuwait. He grew in up west London and was known as a polite, mild-mannered young man.
theguardian.com
An observant Muslim, Emwazi, however, had a penchant for wearing stylish clothes. The Post describes him as bearded and as careful not to make eye contact with women.
The Kuwaiti-born Emwazi, in his mid-20s, appears to have left little trail on social media or elsewhere online. Those who knew him say he was polite and had a penchant for wearing stylish clothes while adhering to the tenets of his Islamic faith. He had a beard and was mindful of making eye contact with women, friends said.
He was raised in a middle-class neighborhood in London and on occasion prayed at a mosque in Greenwich.
The friends, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation, believe that Emwazi started to radicalize after a planned safari in Tanzania following his graduation from the University of Westminster.
He graduated in 2009 in information technology and is also fluent in Arabic. However, instead of a computing career, Emwazi ended up on MI5's radar, the Guardian reported.
Over the course of a year he claimed to have been harassed and intimidated by the security services. In 2010 he went as far as to file a complaint with the Independent Police Complaints Commission over his treatment. The security services declined to confirm or deny that Emwazi was the knife wielding killer.
According to people who have moved in jihadist circles in west London, Emwazi began to be noticed about five or six years ago. “That’s when he emerged, so to speak,” said one. Among his associates at that time was Bilal el-Berjawi, a Londoner of Lebanese origin, who was killed by a drone strike in Somalia three years ago. A clearer picture emerged in August 2009 when Emwazi went on a safari holiday in Tanzania.
Once he landed in the Tanzanian capital, he said he was detained by police and held overnight.In a series of statements to Cage, the group that campaigns on behalf of victims of the war on terror, he alleged he was threatened with beatings by gun-toting members of Tanzania’s security forces.
After being refused entry to Tanzania he was put on a plane to the Netherlands, where he said he was questioned by an MI5 agent named “Nick” who accused him of wanting to fight in Somalia, where the militant group al-Shabaab operates in the southern part of the country.
theguardian.com
The Washington Post said he was believed to have travelled to Syria around 2012 and later joined Islamic State. However, British police declined to comment on the reports.
Commander Richard Walton, head of the Metropolitan Police's Counter Terrorism Command, said: "We have previously asked media outlets not to speculate about the details of our investigation on the basis that life is at risk.
"We are not going to confirm the identity of anyone at this stage or give an update on the progress of this live counter-terrorism investigation."
Emwazi, who remained entangled with MI5 and was detained and interrogated multiples times, decided to move to Kuwait, where he landed a job working for a computer company
He came back to London twice, the second time to finalize his wedding plans to a woman in Kuwait.
In June 2010, however, counterterrorism officials in Britain detained him again – this time fingerprinting him and searching his belongings.
When he tried to fly back to Kuwait the next day, he was prevented from doing so. In his final interrogation he claimed to have been strangled by a police officer.
theguardian.com
According to the Guardian, Emwazi is thought to have been incensed by the decision to bar him from Kuwait, the land of his birth, and where he had worked and planned to marry
“I had a job waiting for me and marriage to get started,” he wrote in a June 2010 email to Cage. But now “I feel like a prisoner, only not in a cage, in London. A person imprisoned & controlled by security service men, stopping me from living my new life in my birthplace & country, Kuwait.”
Close friends of Emwazi’s told the Post that his situation in London had made him desperate to leave the country. It’s unclear exactly when he reached Syria or how. One friend said he believed Emwazi wanted to travel to Saudi Arabia to teach English in 2012 but was unsuccessful. Soon afterward, the friend said, he was gone.
“He was upset and wanted to start a life elsewhere,” one of the friends said. “He at some stage reached the point where he was really just trying to find another way to get out.”
theguardian.com