Last week, Washington Post declared that it had discovered the true identity of the notorious Islamic State (IS) killer called Jihadi John by the British press because of his London accent, which we heard on the gruesome videos where he decapitated the supposed enemies of the IS. Dressed all in black, with a balaclava covering his head except for slits for his eyes, this is the fashion in which Jihadi John always appeared in the videos, standing, knife in hand, his victims kneeling in front of him in orange jumpsuits to resemble the uniforms that the US military make the prisoners at Guantánamo use.
It is worth remembering his victims, all captured in Syria while they were either helping refugees from the civil war or providing news coverage: First it was the American journalist James Foley, beheaded on Aug. 19, 2014; Steven Sotloff also an American journalist, killed on Sept. 2, 2014; then it was the British aid worker David Haines on Sept. 13, 2014; next it was the British taxi driver ferrying humanitarian aid to Syria, Alan Henning, killed on Oct. 3, 2014; American aid worker Peter Abdul Rahman Kassing was next on Nov. 16, 2014, and finally the Japanese Haruna Yakuna and Kenji Goto Game were both killed in January 2015.
So who is this bloodthirsty killer? According to press reports and the British NGO Cage, which helps prisoners of the war on terror, Jihadi John, 27, is Mohammed Emwazi, born in Kuwait of parents of Iraqi origin, but without any nationality at the time, which they call “Bidoon.” At six, he immigrated with his parents to the UK and they eventually became British citizens. Fluent in Arabic and English, by all accounts he was a good student, from a middle class family, and studied computer science at the University of Westminster in London, graduating in 2009. Soon after he and some friends, all Muslims, traveled to Tanzania in August 2009 allegedly to undertake a safari for a month. Once off the plane in Tanzania, they were detained by local police and held in a police station for 24 hours before being deported back to Europe. Arriving in Amsterdam they were stopped again by Dutch security officers and taken to an interrogation room, where agents of the British domestic intelligence service MI5 awaited them. There they were questioned about the real reason for their trip. MI5 said they were on their way to Somalia to join with the extremist group Al-Shabab. Emwazi denied this accusation, and at the end of the interrogation the British agents said: “See you again in England.”
After that Emwazi was well in the sights of MI5, even when he moved to Kuwait, where he found a good job and eventually a potential bride. Returning in 2010 to London to visit his parents, he was questioned by immigration officers upon arrival at Heathrow. Returning to Kuwait, Emwazi firmed the engagement and returned to London in July 2010 to tell his family about the fact. When he tried to return to Kuwait after only a week in London, he was barred from leaving the country, and led to an intense interrogation session at the airport by MI5 agents. There they intimidated him and one policeman tried to strangle him when they got into an argument. After four hours of interrogation, he was released. In the following days, British agents visited the family of his fiancée in Kuwait, which caused the breakup of the engagement. MI5 also shared their suspicions with the Kuwaiti authorities, who canceled Emwazi’s visa. With no fiancée and unable to return to work in the place where he was born, Emwazi felt like a prisoner in London.
Frustrated with his predicament, according to Cage which interviewed Emwazi in 2009 and kept in touch with him until 2012, he decided in 2012 to take a course to become certified as an English teacher. When he passed the final test, he applied for jobs in various language centers in Saudi Arabia to teach English. Two of his friends got jobs, but he was rejected. In early 2013, Emwazi’s father suggested he change his name legally to have fewer problems. Emwazi did, becoming Mohammed Al-Ayan. With that, he tried to buy for one last time a plane ticket to Kuwait, but again was barred from boarding the flight, according to Cage. A week later he told his parents he was going to travel abroad and never returned.
Of course, this narrative is full of holes and things left unsaid. As a person as supposedly normal as Emwazi presents himself in this story above, how did he suddenly become the monstrous, throat-cutting murderer of the IS videos? And the role of Cage in trying to humanize Emwazi, raises the issue that perhaps they were too sympathetic to clearly see what a deranged terrorist he really was.
The mother of Emwazi told the press that she recognized her son’s voice the first time she heard him talking in one of the IS videos, but did not inform the authorities. The killer’s father was shocked to learn that his son could be the Jihadi John, but soon after consulting a lawyer and perhaps in a desperate attempt to deflect public hatred, issued a statement saying there was no evidence that it was really his son.
Why analyze the life of such a bloodthirsty murderer? Maybe it will help us understand how a young, middle-class, well-educated man was able to become so deviated from the right path that he now has become a star of pornographic IS videos, slaying victims who were in fact helping Syrians. We cannot blame the British secret service for having harassed Emwazi so much that they pushed him into taking this course. The leap he made from the life that he led to the monster that he became is huge and only Emwazi and the fanatical ideology of IS can be blamed for this.
n The writer is a Saudi journalist based in Brazil.
