First picture of the face of the younger, normal, happy looking
schoolboy who has now turned into the reviled, disgusting ISIS
executioner, Jihadi John, who has publicly beheaded many foreign
nationals and now the face of ISIS. Originally born in Kuwait before
moving to UK at 6, his name is Mohammed Emwazi. He embraced British
life, playing football in the affluent streets of West London while
supporting Manchester United. Neighbours recalled a polite, quietly
spoken boy who was studious at his Church of England school, where he
was the only Muslim pupil in his class. The son of a Kuwaiti minicab
driver, young Emwazi arrived in Britain speaking only a few words of
English, and appeared more interested in football than in Islam. It
was only after he won a place studying computing at the University of
Westminster that his behaviour began to change.
He was on a UK terror watch list, but managed to flee to Syria in
2012. Now, he's known around the world as the notorious Islamic State
murderer who has shocked the world with his blood lust.
The university has since been linked with several proponents of
radical Islam, and Emwazi appeared to have fallen under their sway.
He began attending different mosques and was known to associate with
Bilal el-Berjawi, who was killed by a drone strike in Somalia three
years ago.
In August 2009, after his graduation, Emwazi flew to Tanzania in East
Africa with friends and told authorities they were going on a wildlife
safari.
But the group was refused entry and put on a plane to the Netherlands,
where Emwazi later claimed he was questioned by an MI5 agent called
Nick.
The British officer accused him of planning to travel to Somalia to
join the militant group Al Shabaab, he said, and said MI5 had been
watching him.
Emwazi denied the accusation – bragging that he would not take a
designer Rocawear sweater in his luggage if he was planning to join
Somalian rebels.
In emails to the campaign group Cage, Emwazi said: 'He [Nick] knew
everything about me; where I lived, what I did, the people I hanged
around with.'
'Nick' then tried to recruit the 21-year-old, Emwazi claimed, and
threatened him when he refused to cooperate.
Emwazi said the officer told him: 'You're going to have a lot of
trouble…You're going to be known…You're going to be followed…Life will
be harder for you.'
On his return to Britain, Emwazi said his family told him they had
been 'visited', and he claimed a woman he had been planning to marry
broke off their engagement because her family had also been contacted
and were scared.
According to Emwazi, his family then began planning for him to travel
to Kuwait to get him away from the 'harassment' he had suffered in
Britain and he went to work for a computer programming company in the
emirate.
In his account to Cage, he said security officers continued to visit
his family and he decided to make a 'new life' in Kuwait, where he was
once again planning to marry.
But following a visit back to Britain in 2010 he said he was stopped
at Heathrow Airport and barred from flying back to Kuwait, and claimed
that he was interrogated by an aggressive officer who threw him
against a wall, grabbed his beard and strangled him.
Emwazi made an official complaint to the Independent Police Complaints
Commission, saying he had been assaulted by the officer.
But court documents show he was also arrested himself later that year
and charged with possessing five stolen bicycles, although he was
later acquitted at court.
Incensed by the decision to stop him returning to Kuwait, Emwazi told
Cage he felt 'like a prisoner' in London.
He said he was 'a person imprisoned and controlled by security service
men, stopping me from living my new life in my birthplace and country,
Kuwait.'
Friends told the Washington Post he was already talking wildly about
travelling to Syria, where the uprising against Bashar al Assad was
beginning in earnest.
But he also applied for work in Saudi Arabia, taking a cou
