Mohammed Emwazi, the suspected Islamic State propagandist and killer reportedly responsible for the murder of at least seven prisoners in a series of grizzly films now better known as ‘Jihadi John’ has apparently been on the ‘radar’ of Western intelligence agencies for years, and was even subject of a recruitment attempt.
Emwazi’s first known contact with the security services was as long ago as 2009, when he was prevented from travelling within Africa and returned to the United Kingdom by Tanzanian authorities. He had been watched by the Security Service MI5 and others even before then, as he had enjoyed links to a banned African terror group while he was at University, at a campus that has been called a “hotbed of radicalism”.
Although Emwazi claimed his trip to Africa in 2009 was to go on Safari with friends after university, the Daily Telegraph reports on secret government documents which claim he was actually planning on joining East-African terror group Al-Shabaab. Government papers suggest he was monitored as far back as 2007, while still a student.
It is possible Emwazi was even under government surveillance before he went to the University of Westminster and met radicalisers there. Born in Kuwait, he moved to the UK as a young man with his family and settled in Queens Park in West London. Although an area of expensive, imposing Victorian housing, the neighbourhood and surrounding areas in West London can lay claim to being the home of gang violence, and a number of Britain’s ‘best known’ Jihadists.
An attempt to ‘turn’ the killer and make him a security service informant apparently failed, a life event which Muslim ‘human rights’ group Cage has blamed for his radicalisation.
It is now known Emwazi ‘Jihadi John’, as had been before suggested had apparent links to an infamous west London mosque which has been before identified as a “common factor” linking many killers. Breitbart London reported last year on the Al-Manaar mosque in Ladbroke Grove, which has grown so large its chairman has admitted he has no way of controlling what goes on there.
Speaking in October, Syrian born Dr Abdulkarim Khalil said of the difficulty he had preventing radicalisation at his mosque: “On Fridays we have about 2,000 people come. Who meets who? Who says what to who? I think it would be dishonest if I told you ‘No’.
“But we try our best to control what goes on in our premises. We don’t allow people to address the congregation; we don’t allow people to distribute literature. Unfortunately these things happen on the big occasions, like on Fridays. And then you find people on the street outside the mosque, lobbying people, giving out literature — some of it for good causes, some of it for others”.
Other former worshippers at the Al-Manaar now fighting at the sharp end of global Jihad, or having died in its service include Islamic State recruits and best friends who grew up in west London Hamza Parvez and Mohammed Nasser. While Nasser was killed almost immediately after arriving in Syria, Parvez is thought to still be fighting and making films encouraging other young Muslims in Britain to join him.
Another two local worshippers killed while fighting for the Islamic state are Palestinian Mohammed el-Araj, and Choukri Ellekhlifi. The pair were early converts to the Islamic State ideology and were killed in 2013.
Female ‘underpants smuggler’ Amal Al-Wahabi, who tried to move €20,000 to terrorists in Turkey using her knickers was an employee of the Mosque’s child nursery. She is believed to have met her radical Islamist husband who worshipped there, and now fights for the Islamic State.
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