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'Jihadi John' Stirs Britain to Defend Spy Agencies - New York Times


LONDON — After disclosures that the man who posed in videos of the murder of Western hostages was known to British intelligence, Prime Minister David Cameron on Friday defended the security services, saying they faced tough decisions and had prevented deadly attacks.


“All of the time, they are having to make incredibly difficult judgments, and I think basically they make very good judgments on our behalf,” Mr. Cameron said at a news conference.


“I think while we are in the middle of this vast effort to make sure British citizens are safe, I think the most important thing is to get behind them,” he said.


Mr. Cameron was speaking the day after news media identified the man in the videos, nicknamed Jihadi John, as Mohammed Emwazi, who was born in Kuwait in 1988 but grew up in West London. He said the authorities would do “everything we can” to track down Mr. Emwazi and other terrorism suspects.



Wearing a black mask and speaking with a London accent, Mr. Emwazi is thought to have appeared in a video last August, showing the beheading of the American journalist James Foley. Mr. Emwazi is also thought to have been featured in videos of subsequent beheadings of American and British hostages.






Mohammed Emwazi, in His Own Words


In Britain, the failure of the security services to prevent him from joining the Islamic State in Syria has provoked questioning about the effectiveness of the surveillance of suspects and of the wider effort to prevent the radicalization of young Muslims.


One advocacy group, CAGE, has suggested that harassment by MI5, the British domestic intelligence agency, may have contributed to the radicalization of Mr. Emwazi, after his arrest in 2009 when he flew to Tanzania with friends, claiming to be going on a safari.


At that time, British security officials are said to have tried to recruit Mr. Emwazi as an informer. But the claim that MI5 had contributed to his radicalization was rejected as “reprehensible” by Mr. Cameron’s office.


John Sawers, the former chief of Britain’s foreign intelligence service, MI6, defended the tactic of approaching suspects, which he said provided an “opportunity for the individual to draw back from the terrorist group” with which one might be considering a relationship.





OPEN Graphic



Graphic: ISIS Attacks Against Assyrian Christians


Through such contact “you also give them a warning,” he told the BBC, adding, “but the idea that somehow being spoken to by a member of MI5 is a radicalizing act — I think this is very false.”


Mr. Sawers also noted the scale of the challenge facing intelligence agencies. “There are probably several thousand of these individuals of concern, and the numbers are rising as more people go to Syria and Iraq and are radicalized out there,” he said.


“No one is talking about rounding up all these people or keeping 100 percent coverage of them; there is just not the resources for that and it would be contrary to our principles of human rights to do that,” Mr. Sawers said.


Speaking in Wales, Mr. Cameron defended the security services, praising the work of people he described as “extraordinary men and women.”




Play Video|5:42

The Evolution of ISIS



The Evolution of ISIS



How has ISIS, a 21st-century terrorist organization with a retrograde religious philosophy, spread from Iraq to Syria, Libya and beyond?


Video by Quynhanh Do on December 13, 2014.

“I meet with them regularly. I ask them searching questions about what they do, and in my almost five years’ experience as prime minister, I think they are incredibly impressive, hard-working, dedicated, courageous and effective at protecting our country,” Mr. Cameron said.


In Britain, as in other Western countries, intelligence officials face a daily challenge in deciding how to spend their stretched resources and how to prioritize their efforts. They also have to confront the quandary of dealing with those they suspect of having links to terrorism groups, but against whom they have insufficient evidence to prosecute.


Mr. Cameron argued that their “dedication and work has saved us from plots on the streets of the U.K. that could have done us immense damage” within the past few months.


The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said Friday that the government had made a mistake in 2011 when it replaced a system of control orders, used as a form of house arrest against terrorism suspects, with a less restrictive regime.


“I do think that was a mistake, we are now back on the right track,” Mr. Johnson told the BBC. “The politicians who made that mistake need to think very carefully about why they did it, and I think the benefit of the doubt was, I’m afraid, given too much to those who wish us serious harm.”



A version of this article appears in print on February 28, 2015, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘Jihadi John’ Stirs Britain To Defend Spy Agencies .










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