26 February 2015

The masked Islamic State militant known as "Jihadi John", who has been pictured in the videos of the beheadings of Western hostages, has been named.

The BBC understands he is Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwaiti-born British man in his mid-20s from West London, who was known to UK security services.
They chose not to disclose his name earlier for operational reasons.
Emwazi first appeared in a video last August, when he apparently killed the American journalist James Foley.

He was later thought to have been pictured in the videos of the beheadings of US journalist Steven Sotloff, British aid worker David Haines, British taxi driver Alan Henning, and American aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, also known as Peter.
In each of the videos, the militant appeared dressed in a black robe with a black balaclava covering all but his eyes and top of his nose.

snip

Speaking with a British accent, he taunted and threatened Western powers before holding his knife to the hostages' necks, appearing to start to cutting before the film stops.
Last month, the militant appeared in a video with the Japanese hostages Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto, shortly before they were killed.
BBC News special correspondent Lucy Manning says Emwazi is understood to be around 27 years of age.

Friends of Emzawi told the Washington Post that he was raised in a middle class area of West London and studied computer programming at the University of Westminster.
Our correspondent says it is believed he was known to security services in the UK and the US before leaving for Syria and was linked to a man with connections to the jihadist militant group al-Shabab, in Somalia.
The Washington Post said he was believed to have travelled to Syria around 2012 and later joined Islamic State, which has declared the creation of a "caliphate" in the large swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq it controls.

British police declined to comment on the reports.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31637090

And to throw sand in the administration's claim of needy poor people turning to Islamic terror, it was reported elsewhere that "JJ" is from a well-to-do family. What??? he doesn't need a job? We're living in surreal times. God help us! TM