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.
The apartment where he lived before fleeing to join 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. Whitehall sources
said Emwazi had been known to security services for at least weeks, probably
months, but not made public because the priority was trying to find him.
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 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.
Source: Dailymail
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