Pentagon Says ‘Jihadi
John’ Likely Killed in Airstrike
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
and REUTERS 1:37
Leaders on ‘Jihadi John’
Strike
Video Prime Minister
David Cameron of Britain and Secretary of State John Kerry discussed the
American airstrike on the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa that targeted the
British jihadist Mohammed Emwazi.
By SEWELL CHAN and KIMIKO
DE FREYTAS-TAMURA
NOVEMBER 13, 2015
LONDON — The Pentagon
said on Friday that it is “reasonably certain” that an American airstrike
killed Mohammed Emwazi, the Islamic State’s most notorious executioner.
Col. Steve Warren, a
spokesman for the American-led coalition fighting the militant group, told
reporters at a news briefing that the airstrike on Thursday took place near the
Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa, Syria. He said the Pentagon was still
seeking final verification that Mr. Emwazi, a 27-year-old British citizen who
became known as Jihadi John, was killed in the strike.
On Friday, a senior
official with the United States military said it had used a Reaper drone armed
with Hellfire missiles to attack a car in which Mr. Emwazi and another militant
were thought to be traveling. “We think we got him,” said the official, who
spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational details.
Calling the Islamic State
an “evil terrorist death cult,” Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain
defended the decision to target Mr. Emwazi, who was born in Kuwait and is a
naturalized British citizen, as “an act of self-defense” and “the right thing
to do.”
A video still believed to
show Mohammed Emwazi, a member of the Islamic State often referred to as Jihadi
John.
SITE INTELLIGENCE GROUP
“We have been working,
with the United States, literally around the clock to track him down,” Mr.
Cameron said in London. “This was a combined effort, and the contribution of
both our countries was essential. Emwazi is a barbaric murderer.”
Using an alternative
acronym for the Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS, Mr. Cameron added,
“He was ISIL’s lead executioner, and let us never forget that he killed many,
many Muslims, too.”
At a news conference in
Tunis, Sectretary of State John Kerry said that the airstrike should serve as a
warning.
“We are still assessing
the results of this strike, but the terrorists associated with Daesh need to
know this: Your days are numbered, and you will be defeated,” Mr. Kerry said,
using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. “There is no future, no path
forward for Daesh, which does not lead ultimately to its elimination, to its
destruction.”
Interactive Feature |
Mohammed Emwazi, in His Own Words Mohammed Emwazi, 26, who was recently
identified as the ISIS militant known as “Jihadi John,” encountered British
security forces on his path to radicalization.
Civil liberties advocates
have criticized any official British attempt to kill Mr. Emwazi as possibly
unlawful, in a debate that paralleled the criticism over the Obama
administration’s decision to target and kill Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born
cleric and a United States citizen, in Yemen in 2011.
Mr. Emwazi, who was first
known only as an unidentified, masked man with a British accent, first came to
prominence in August 2014, when the Islamic State released a video in which the
journalist James Foley was shown reading a statement criticizing President
Obama and the American military operation against the Islamic State in Iraq.
His captor then beheaded him off camera and then threatened to behead another
journalist, Steven J. Sotloff, if his demands were not met.
Two weeks later, the
Islamic State released a video showing the masked man beheading Mr. Sotloff.
The Washington Post
revealed Mr. Emwazi’s identity in February, reporting that he grew up in a
well-off family that moved to Britain when he was a child, and that he had
studied computer science at the University of Westminster. The revelation
touched off intense examination of the causes of radicalization among Muslim
immigrants in Europe.
Mr. Emwazi was part of a
group of network of friends, called the “North London Boys” by some
intelligence analysts, who prayed at the same mosque and became captivated by
an Egyptian-born cleric, Hani al-Sibai. Mr. Sibai is thought to have close
links to the Tunisian branch of Ansar al-Shariah, a Salafist group that has
been linked to a deadly attack in June on tourists in Tunisia.
The leader of this
network was Bilal al-Berjawi, who was stripped of his British citizenship in
2011 after he went to Somalia to join the Islamist group known as the Shabab,
and was killed by an American drone strike the next year. That same year,
Mohamed Sakr, another friend, was also killed by a drone strike in Somalia.
British officials have
said that Mr. Emwazi was on a list of potential terror suspects since 2009, but
that they were unable to prevent him from traveling to Syria in 2013.
Mr. Foley’s parents, John
and Diane Foley, said they were not comforted by the news of the attack. “If
only so much effort had been given to rescuing Jim and the other hostages who
were subsequently murdered by ISIS, they might be alive today,” they said in a
statement.
Reg Henning, the brother
of the British aid worker Alan Henning, one of Mr. Emwazi’s victims, told the
BBC, “I was glad to hear he had been killed, but I would have preferred him to
have been brought to justice.” A trial, he added, might have “dragged on for
months and months.”
Bethany Haines, the
daughter of another victim, David Cawthorne Haines, said she felt “an instant
sense of relief” in learning about the attack, because it meant “he wouldn’t
appear in anymore horrific videos.”
Mr. Cameron praised the
American decision to target Mr. Emwazi, saying: “The United Kingdom has no
better friend or ally.”
He added, “If this strike
was successful — and we still await confirmation of that — it will be a strike
at the heart of ISIL, and it will demonstrate to those who would do Britain,
our people and our allies harm we have a long reach, we have unwavering
determination and we never forget about our citizens.”
Mr. Emwazi’s other
victims were Kenji Goto, a journalist, and Haruna Yukawa, an adventurer, both
Japanese, and an American aid worker, Peter Kassig, also known as Abdul-Rahman
Kassig.
The leader of the
opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, said that Mr. Emwazi should ideally
have faced trial. “It appears Mohammed Emwazi has been held to account for his
callous and brutal crimes,” Mr. Corbyn said in a statement on Friday. “However,
it would have been far better for us all if he had been held to account in a
court of law. These events only underline the necessity of accelerating
international efforts, under the auspices of the U.N., to bring an end to the
Syrian conflict as part of a comprehensive regional settlement.”
In August, a British
drone strike, its first inside Syria, killed three people suspected of being
members of the Islamic State, including two British citizens, Reyaad Khan and
Ruhul Amin.
Britain is not formally
taking part in military action in Syria — its Parliament having rejected such
an intervention two years ago — but Britain and France are involved in the
American-led air campaign against Islamic State targets.
In 2009, after returning
from a trip to Africa, Mr. Emwazi contacted Cage, a British advocacy
organization, to complain that he had been harassed by British security services.
In a statement on Friday,
Cage said that Mr. Emwazi “should have been tried as a war criminal” and
expressed concern about the attack aimed at him. “State-sponsored targeted
assassinations undercut the judicial processes that provide the lessons by
which spirals of violence can be stopped,” it said.
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