‘Jihadi John’ of ISIL Execution Videos Identified as British National

Al Jazeera America

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A masked man who featured prominently in a series of grisly beheading videos released by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) was named Thursday as British national Mohammed Emwazi.

Government sources and radicalization experts said they believe the man nicknamed “Jihadi John” by media outlets is Emwazi, a Londoner from a middle-class family who graduated from college with a degree in computer programming. Friends and others familiar with the case confirmed the identity, but police and authorities have yet to go on record with the name…

“He was identified by the U.K. and U.S. some months ago,” Robert McFadden, senior vice president of The Soufan Group, told Al Jazeera via email. McFadden added that he was surprised that it took this long for Emwazi’s identity to surface publicly, but that clearly “it would be handled as a sensitive matter by U.K. and U.S. intelligence services in order to put pieces together that answer identity, associates/associations, plans, communications, locations, capabilities and targeting.”

Also cited in the Washington Post article were comments from Asim Qureshi, research director of the London-based…

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