UK man behind Isis beheadings named as Mohammed Emwazi
 A British man has been named as the knife-wielding militant who appears inIslamic State (Isis) videos claiming responsibility for the beheadings of US, British and other hostages. 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”. The name was first published by the Washington Post on Thursday morning. 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. Those who knew him say he had a penchant for wearing stylish clothes but remained an observant Muslim. The Post describes him as bearded and as careful not to make eye contact with women. 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. 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. |
