Popular ISIS Militant Executioner, 'Jihadi John' Finally Unmasked As A Young Londoner

A man with a British accent seen in ISIS videos showing the beheadings of Western hostages was identified Thursday as Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwaiti-born Londoner, according to two U.S. officials and two U.S. congressional sources briefed on the matter.  The Islamic State executioner known as 'Jihadi John' was today named as a university graduate from London who was able to flee to Syria despite being on an MI5 terror watch list.
Mohammed Emwazi, of Queen’s Park, west London, was allegedly spoken to three times in one year by police and security services in Tanzania, the Netherlands and Britain. The 26-year-old, who studied computer programming at the University of Westminster, is said to have travelled to the Middle East three years ago and later joined ISIS.

Jihadi John has featured in the execution videos of British aid workers Alan Henning and David Haines, U.S. journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, Japanese reporter Kenji Goto and Syrian soldiers. His identity was confirmed this afternoon by two U.S. government sources.

Arabic speaker Emwazi has one brother and two sisters, and first moved to Britain aged six. The son of a minicab driver, he was reported to have been raised in a middle-class family and occasionally prayed at a mosque in Greenwich, south-east London.

But after graduating from university, in May 2009 Emwazi flew to Tanzania with friends apparently on a safari - but was arrested by police upon landing in Dar es Salaam and sent back to Britain. En route he stopped in Amsterdam, where he claimed to have been accused by an MI5 officer of trying to reach Somalia, home of the militant group Al Shabaab.

Emwazi claimed to have been harassed and intimidated by security services and even complained to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. He alleged an agent from MI5 knew ‘everything about me; where I lived, what I did, and the people I hanged around with’ and claimed the organisation attempted to ‘turn’ him to work for them.

Asim Qureshi, research director from lobby group Cage - who had been in contact with Emwazi before he left for Syria said he also believed the man was Jihadi John.

Sources: Washington Post | DailyMail | CNN