'Jihadi John' needed anger management as a child: reports - New York Daily News

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Saturday, February 28, 2015, 1:35 PM

Uncredited/AP School instructors in London said that 'Jihadi John,' otherwise known as Mohammed Emwazi, needed anger management therapy as a child, but they viewed him as a 'success story,' as it appeared he had learned to get his emotions in check as time went on.

The barbaric ISIS extremist known as “Jihadi John” had trouble controlling his emotions as a child — and took anger management therapy, according to reports.

Kuwait-born Mohammed Emwazi, unveiled in newspaper reports Thursday as the vicious butcher with a British accent who has appeared in beheading videos for the Islamic terrorist group, was a decent student from a good family, one of the former teachers told the BBC.

Emwazi attended Quintin Kynaston school in St John’s Wood, London, as a child and was called a “lovely, lovely boy” who had a “real willingness to try and succeed,” the instructor told the BBC.

But the teacher, who declined to be named, said Emwazi showed signs of the sick extremist he would become.

“We'd find that he’d get very angry and worked up and it would take him a long time to calm himself down, so we did a lot of work as a school to help him with his anger and to control his emotions,” the teacher told the network.

The classes appeared to help and Emwazi was considered a “success story” after the therapy.

STEFAN WERMUTH/REUTERS A former teacher of Emwazi said that he was a decent student from a good family. Local media reported that this flat used to be the home of Emwazi beofre he was radicalized and moved to Syria to join ISIS.

“It seemed to work. He had a lot of respect for all of the work that had been done for him at our school,” she added.

The not-yet-radicalized Muslim youth went on to study computer science at the University of Westminster.

Emwazi first came to the attention of the British intelligence services sometime around 2009, after he graduated from college, during investigations into terrorism in Somalia.

British intelligence agencies have faced harsh criticism for not preventing the jihadi from joining with ISIS.

David Anderson, in charge of reviewing Britain’s terrorism-related legislation, said intelligence groups may have dropped the ball, but faced a big challenge to identify real threats from “hundreds, probably thousands” of suspects.

STRINGER/REUTERS British intelligence has received criticism for not preventing the jihadi from joining ISIS. David Anderson, in charge of reviewing Britain's terrorism-related legislation, said that intelligence groups may have dropped the ball with Emwazi, but they won;t know until there's been an inquiry or report of some kind.

“Perhaps they did slip up in this case but one won’t know until there’s been an inquiry or a report of some kind,” he told BBC.

It is believed that Emwazi traveled to Syria sometime in 2012, along with a number of other radicalized West Londoners.

He later became one of the most prominent members of the brutal ISIS group, which has taken control of large swathes of Syria and Iraq.

Emwazi has appeared in chilling videos released by the terrorist organization including the disturbing clip released last August showing the beheading of American journalist James Foley.

“I just can't believe he'd do that,” the unnamed teacher told the BBC.

dslattery@nydailynews.com

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