I plotted to kill soldiers and police in drive-by shootings on UK streets, reveals IS ‘Beatle’
A KEY member of the Islamic State gang known as the ‘Beatles’ has admitted to being part of a plot to kill soldiers and police officers on the streets of London, it emerged yesterday.
London-born Alexanda Kotey was part of the terror cell with fellow Briton Mohammed Emwazi – known as ‘Jihadi John’ – when hostages including the British taxi driver Alan Henning were beheaded in Syria.
In a taped confession filmed by ITV News and broadcast last night, Kotey revealed for the first time that from his base 3,000 miles away in Syria he aided two British terrorists in their plans to carry out a series of drive-by shootings in west London – targeting a police station and an Army barracks.
Kotey, 35, said the Islamic State wanted to plant terror cells in European countries so they could ‘execute a mission’ if they felt they were under threat in the Middle East. Medical student Tarik Hassane and physics undergraduate Suhaib Majeed were given life sentences for their foiled plot in 2016 in which the pair, who were radicalised in Britain, planned to kill using mopeds and firearms.
Kotey, who has been detained by Kurdish forces for the past 16 months, said he would speak to young men who had been radicalised in Britain to obtain donations they had raised for the Islamic State.
He was regularly in contact with Hassane as the pair grew up near each other and later allegedly arranged a weapon for him.
‘We’d coordinate with them to send money to us and I used my phone to communicate,’ he said. ‘It’s normal that he [Mohammed Emwazi] would ask me to “talk to this guy” to see what he had.
‘I was the one who talked to him and I was the one who arranged for him to have a gun with a silencer.’ During the interview, Kotey said his role in the ‘Beatles’ – also comprising Britons El Shafee Elsheikh and Aine Davis – was to extract information from the Western prisoners, including their email addresses.
These would be used to contact their families to inform them they were holding their loved ones hostage, using information which only relatives could know.
Kotey and Emwazi first guarded Western prisoners in the Idlib countryside in 2012 before they moved to Aleppo.
The terror cell are feared to have beheaded at least 27 Western hostages, including Britons Mr Henning, a taxi driver-turned aid worker, and volunteer David Haines.
The American journalist James Foley was also beheaded by the group. Describing the hostages, Kotey also named the British photographer John Cantlie, who is believed to be alive despite his capture in Syria in 2012.
Kotey said: ‘ Generally we’d speak about Islam, speak about politics, if there was ever opportunity to speak.’
Former Westminster University student Emwazi was killed in a drone strike in November 2015 and Davis, a convicted criminal from Hammersmith, west London, was jailed in Turkey in 2017.
Kotey and Elsheikh were stripped of their British citizenship last year and are expected to be transferred to custody in the US, where they may face trial later this year.
Despite his close association with Emwazi, who carried out beheadings on camera, Kotey denied involvement with the killings.
‘I arranged for him to have a silencer’ ‘Heavy accusations’
He said: ‘I don’t see [how] in my case it makes a very big difference if I was actually there or not there.
‘ I have a lot of accusations against me, they are quite heavy accusations so it wouldn’t change much if I said I was there or I wasn’t.’
Kotey and Elsheikh have complained they will not receive a fair trial in the US because of the decision to revoke their British citizenship.
The Home Secretary Sajid Javid provoked admiration and criticism in equal measures last year when a leaked letter he had sent to the US attorney general revealed the UK would not ‘require assurances’ over the death penalty in relation to the pair.