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US official claims Islamic State jihadi 'eviscerated' as he left a building in Raqqa in a 'clean hit' drone strike as Pentagon try to get confirmation Mohammed Emwazi is dead
Mohammed Emwazi or Jihadi John
By Barney Henderson, New York
5:02AM GMT 13 Nov 2015
• Jihadi John target of US drone strike
• Briton symbolises Isil brutality
• Pentagon seeking to confirm if he is dead
Washington (AFP) - The US military said Friday it was "reasonably certain" that the Islamic State executioner "Jihadi John," a British citizen, was killed in a drone strike in Syria.
Mohammed Emwazi, whose masked figure appeared in a string of graphic videos showing the beheading of Western hostages, was targeted in a combined British-US operation Thursday in Raqa, the de facto IS capital in war-torn Syria.
In a briefing webcast from Baghdad to Pentagon reporters, Colonel Steve Warren said it would take time for formal confirmation that the Hellfire missile drone strike killed the notorious 27-year-old militant.
But Warren said the United States had "great confidence that this individual was Jihadi John."
"We know for a fact that the weapons system hit its intended target, and that the personnel who were on the receiving end of that weapons system were in fact killed," he said. "We are reasonably certain that we killed the target that we intended to kill, which is 'Jihadi John'."
"This guy was a human animal, and killing him probably makes the world a little bit better place," Warren added.
Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron had earlier said Emwazi's death was "not yet certain," but that if confirmed, it would be "a strike at the heart" of the IS group.
Analysts said the impact of Emwazi's death would likely be symbolic rather than tactical for the jihadist group, which controls swathes of Iraq and Syria, where they have declared a "caliphate," and is known for widespread atrocities.
But the operation coincided with the launch of a major US-backed offensive in northern Iraq.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking on a visit to Tunis, warned the group's "days are numbered," as Iraqi Kurdish officials said IS had been beaten back from the town of Sinjar.
"Emwazi, a British citizen, participated in the videos showing the murders of US journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, US aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, and a number of other hostages," the Pentagon said in a statement.
He was last seen in the video showing Goto's execution in January.
- Executioner with UK accent -
Emwazi, a London computer programmer, was born in Kuwait to a stateless family of Iraqi origin. His parents moved to Britain in 1993 after their hopes of obtaining Kuwaiti citizenship were quashed.
Dubbed "Jihadi John" after hostages nicknamed a group of IS guards The Beatles, he first appeared in a video in August 2014 showing the beheading of Foley, a 40-year-old American freelance journalist captured in Syria in 2012.
Foley is seen kneeling on the ground, dressed in an orange outfit resembling those worn by prisoners held at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay. Emwazi is dressed entirely in black.
The reporter's parents said Friday the executioner's death was of little consolation to them.
"It is a very small solace to learn that Jihadi John may have been killed by the US government," John and Diane Foley said in a statement.
"His death does not bring Jim back," said the couple. "If only so much effort had been given to finding and rescuing Jim and the other hostages who were subsequently murdered by ISIS, they might be alive today."
Two weeks after Foley, fellow US hostage Sotloff was killed in the same manner, again on camera and by the same executioner.
Sotloff's sister, Lauren, posted on Facebook that the militant "should of (sic) had his head cut off also and been left to suffer. But at least he is dead."
Bethany Haines, whose father David was killed, told ITV News: "After seeing the news that 'Jihadi John' was killed I felt an instant sense of relief."
- 'Tried as a war criminal' -
Raffaello Pantucci of the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London said Emwazi's death would make little strategic difference and could create a "martyr culture" around him.
But Charlie Winter, an academic who focuses on IS activities, said it could be a "big blow."
Emwazi was six years old when his family moved to London. He grew up in North Kensington, a leafy middle-class area where a network of Islamist extremists was uncovered in recent years.
As a child, he was said to be a fan of Manchester United football club and the S Club 7 pop group. He later went on to study information technology at the University of Westminster.
Court papers published by British media connected Emwazi to a network of extremists known as "The London Boys" that were originally trained by the Shebab, Al-Qaeda's East Africa affiliate.
Cage, a London human rights group which worked with Emwazi in Britain before he left for Syria, reacted by saying he should have faced trial, not death.
"Emwazi should have been tried as a war criminal," the group said in a statement.
'Jihadi John': quiet football fan who became IS symbol
AFP
November 14, 2015, 4:45 am
London (AFP) - From a quiet, football loving child to an Islamic State executioner, the man who became one of the most haunting figures of the jihadist movement remains a mystery even after being the high-profile target of a US air strike.
Born Mohammed Emwazi, the masked 27-year-old Brit who became known as "Jihadi John" sparked worldwide revulsion with his grisly executions of foreign aid workers and journalists in Syria on camera.
People who knew him quoted by British media said they could not reconcile the quiet but intense young man they knew with the "cold, sadistic and merciless" killer described by one former hostage.
"Why did he do that? They say he's a very intelligent boy. How did he turn evil?" said James, 47, a former neighbour who gave only his first name.
James thought Emwazi was a "strange" boy, and would often see him cycling around their modest west London red-brick apartment block dressed in traditional Islamic attire.
Emwazi was born in Kuwait, but the family moved to London when he was six years old and he grew up in North Kensington, a leafy, middle-class area where a network of Islamist extremists has since been uncovered.
As a child he was a fan of Manchester United football club and the pop band S Club 7, according to a 1996 school year book published by The Sun tabloid.
"What I want to be when I grow up is a footballer," he wrote in the book.
He went on to study information technology at the University of Westminster, which confirmed that someone by that name left six years ago and said it was "shocked and sickened" by the allegations.
- 'Strange and unfriendly' -
The campaign group Cage, which published years of correspondence with Emwazi, blamed his radicalisation on a post-graduation trip to Tanzania in 2009.
Emwazi told Cage the trip was a holiday, but said he was accused by British authorities of planning to join Al-Shebab fighters in Somalia.
Following overnight detention at gunpoint in Dar es Salaam, the Tanzanian capital, Emwazi said he and his friends were sent back to Britain via Amsterdam, being interrogated in both ports, according to the correspondence released by the London-based charity.
He claimed that British intelligence services had been behind his detention, that they had asked him to become a spy and that they had promised him "a lot of trouble" after he rejected the offer.
On the advice of his mother and taxi-driver father, Emwazi flew to Kuwait to live with his fiancee's family and took up a job in IT, Cage said.
It was while trying to return to Kuwait after a visit to Britain in July 2010 that he claimed in his emails to Cage that authorities blocked him from travelling and put him on a terror watch list.
- 'Adrenaline junky' -
Court papers published by British media connected him to a network of extremists known as "The London Boys" -- originally trained by Al-Shebab.
The Guardian newspaper said some of them played football together.
The papers also linked him to Bilal al-Berjawi, who became a senior leader of Al-Shebab but was killed in a US drone attack in January 2012.
After changing his name to Mohammed al-Ayan and one final failed attempt to enter Kuwait in early 2013, he went missing, the Cage emails said.
Cage said the police told his family they believe he travelled to Syria after that.
How he rose to become one of the world's most wanted men is a mystery, but one hostage who fell under his control in the IS group's hub in Raqa talked of a "cold, sadistic and merciless" killer.
Two British trainee medics who met Emwazi when he visited friends in a Syrian hospital described him as "quiet, but a bit of an adrenaline junkie".
"I spotted this guy walking in, dressed in full combat kit, with a pistol on a holster, magazine, shopping bag in one hand and talking on a phone in the other," one of the medics told ITV News.
"He would bring drinks, sweets and ice cream".
They described hearing of one incident in which Emwazi drew his gun against a group of armed men who threatened to steal his weapons.
"He seems like someone with not a lot to lose," said the medic.
