In a series of e-mails to the 'Mail on Sunday' several years ago, the masked Islamic State militant now known as 'Jihadi John' claimed he was being harassed by British security forces and considered suicide. VPC
A screen grab taken from a video released by the Islamic State shows "Jihadi John."(Photo: AFP/Getty Images)
Two conflicting profiles are emerging for Mohammed Emwazi, the recently revealed identity of Islamic State butcher "Jihadi John."
Emwazi, before leaving for Syria to join the militant group, claimed he was an innocent victim of British security persecution. He sent e-mails to the London-based publication Mail on Sunday in 2010 and 2011 saying he contemplated suicide due to the intense harassment.
"I'll take as many pills as I can so that I will sleep for ever," he warned in e-mails to Mail security editor Robert Verkaik. Emwazi, now infamous in the West for horrifying videos featuring footage of him beheading hostages, then referred to himself as an innocent "dead man walking" and complained that he was constantly under surveillance.
Emwazi, 26, graduated from University of Westminister in London with a degree in computer programming in 2009. Soon he was making trips back and forth to Kuwait, where he was born, but those trips resulted in a series of lengthy interrogations that ended with him losing his Kuwaiti visa, a job and fiancée he had there.
Early in 2013, he surfaced in Turkey. Months later, he was in Syria and the masked face of the Islamic State in its battle to create a radical Islamic nation-state across much of Syria and Iraq.
British security officials paint a different picture of Emwazi before Syria. They have linked him to an Osama bin Laden sleeper cell called London Boys that planned to carry out attacks in the West. Other members included Ibrahim Magag, a Somali-born former train conductor from London involved in arranging financial support for al-Qaeda, the Mail reports.
Writes the Mail:
Until now, Emwazi was thought only to have been a peripheral figure among the capital's Islamic extremists. Yet a court document seen by this newspaper alleges that he was closely involved in the cell's activities, including the "provision of funds and equipment to Somalia ... for terrorism related activity."
Friends also told the Mail that Emwazi was close to a gang that used stun guns to rob wealthy residents on the streets of Central London's Belgravia district. Two of the gang traveled to Syria a year before Emwazi — and were subsequently killed, the Mail reports.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1ArDFtE
Source: Top Stories - Google News - http://ift.tt/1ALDT3I
0 comments:
Post a Comment