ISIS Executioner "Jihadi John" Unmasked As Mohammed Emwazi
In a new report by the Washington Post, Jihadi John, the black balaclava-clad face of the Islamic State's gruesome beheading videos, has been identified as 27-year-old Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwait-born British national who grew up in London.
Emwazi first emerged as an ISIS figurehead in a video released last August in which captured American journalist James Foley is beheaded, seemingly by Emwazi himself. His presence and British accent became a motif in subsequent videos depicting the beheading of other captives.
A senior British security official, the New York Times reports, has confirmed that Emwazi is indeed Jihadi John, who apparently first travelled to Syria in 2012. More from the Post:
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.
That trip to Tanzania, in 2009, at one point led Emwazi to Amsterdam, where the Independent previously reported that Emwazi (identified in the paper as Muhammad ibn Muazzam) claimed to have been picked up by MI5 and accused of attempting to travel to Somalia to enlist in al-Shabab, an ally of al-Qaeda.
It's unclear when exactly American and British intelligence agencies identified Emwazi as John, but as the BBC notes, he has been a person of interest to MI5 since 2010 "because he features in semi-secret court cases relating to extremism overseas and back in the UK":
Emwazi has been previously described as a member of a network involving at least 13 men from London - and at least two of them were subjected to house arrest control orders or T-Pims. One absconded. The chances of Emwazi ever returning to the UK are vanishingly small.
"I have no doubt that Mohammed is Jihadi John," one of Emwazi's "close friends" told the Washington Post. "He was like a brother to me...I am sure it is him."
