KILLER RINGO
» The ISIS ‘Beatle’ talks to the Mirror from cell in Syria » Brit saved Jihadi John’s life before his beheading rampage » Thug laughed at execution videos & was prepared to kill » He wants to live in UK with secret wife and 3 children
ISLAMIC State terrorist Alexanda Kotey enabled fellow Brit Jihadi John to become the caliphate’s executioner by saving his life on the battlefield only months earlier.
In an astonishing jail cell confession, Kotey told of his friendship with fellow Londoner Mohammed Emwazi.
The pair were in the British terror cell nicknamed The Beatles by their prisoners in Syria, with leader Emwazi dubbed John and Kotey as Ringo.
Incredibly Kotey, 35, said the fact Emwazi slaughtered a series of innocent victims did not change his feelings about his old pal from West London – because the killings were only “two minutes of his life”.
And he admitted he wept when the thug was killed by a US drone in November 2015, aged 27.
Even with his future hanging in the balance in a jail in northern Syria, and desperate to minimise his role in IS, he still will not condemn the monster.
At a secret jail location in the Kurdish-held Rojava region, he told the Daily Mirror how he saved Emwazi when he was shot by anti-terror rebel group the Free Syrian Army in fierce fighting near the country’s second biggest city Aleppo in early 2014.
He said: “We were in the Aleppo countryside surrounded by Free Syrian Army factions and they’d taken the nearby town from us. We had been told to regain it and attacked.
“We were attacking from a group of olive groves and tried to cut across an open field. He was in front of me. I was fighting alongside Emwazi. We got just half way and came under fire. We both went down and he was shot.
“He was lying there. The bullet had hit him in the back at an angle and we managed to roll into cover.
“I held him in my lap and I really thought he was breathing his last breath. I struggled with him and got him into a car and we rushed him to a makeshift hospital and he survived.”
Months later, Emwazi caused worldwide horror when he appeared in a series of internet videos beheading Western hostages. We spoke to Kotey in the most in-depth interview he has given from his cell, where he has been held since his arrest in 2017 by Kurdish forces outside the Syrian city of Raqqa, capital of the now-defunct caliphate. Dressed in a scruffy blue sweatshirt, jogging bottoms and sandals he was unusually frank in our 90-minute interview, as he sipped sugary local tea, and even passed a glass to me. We negotiated for days to get access to Kotey, and restrictions were placed on what we could ask him – which we have agreed not to reveal. The US State Department calls Kotey a “designated terrorist” who “likely engaged in the group’s executions and exceptionally cruel torture methods”. It says he was a “recruiter responsible for recruiting several UK nationals to join the terrorist organisation”. All Western jihadi detainees are awaiting their fate in Rojava. Some French prisoners have been sent to Baghdad and tried and hanged. There is some support across Europe for a trial to be held in Kurdish-controlled northern Syria.
In our meeting Kotey repeatedly said he “regretted becoming a jihadi” and wants to return to Britain.
But the more he revealed the less I felt he was repentant. His bond with Emwazi was first forged on the streets of London, where Kotey grew up in Ladbroke Grove. Both were linked to the “London Boys” network of extremists who connected through football and traded essays on radical Islam. The pair travelled to Syria together in 2012 as extremists fought to establish a caliphate in the region after the 2011 uprising against President Bashar Assad’s regime. As the thugs took grip, a series of videos in 2014 showed Emwazi beheading Westerners.
But despite claiming he privately objected to the films, Kotey admitted the pair remained friends. They were so close that their wives also became friends and stayed in touch.
Kotey admitted he broke down and cried when a US drone blew Emwazi up with a hellfire missile in Syria,
It’s difficult to understand maybe if you don’t have a friend who’s done that
ALEXANDA KOTEY ON HOW HE COULD STAY PALS WITH KILLER
killing him instantly. He heard the news from hundreds of miles away while he was at IS “sniper school”.
Asked how he had felt, Kotey said: “I cried. I was completing my sniper training in the Hama area [in the west of the country]. We’d done the theory, this was the practical. We were living in caves because there was a lot of bombardments at the time.
“I asked the person in charge of snipers if I could be allowed to return to Raqqa to check out news about a friend and he allowed me to go.
“I didn’t tell him who he was. I didn’t like to make it known I had that relationship. Emwazi himself was not known – I mean that he was the person behind the mask.
“Even in Islamic State many people did not know. When I arrived back in Raqqa I got to my house and my wife informed me he had been killed.
“I cried and decided to stay at home for while and not speak to anybody. I don’t think anyone dared to go to his funeral except people in the hospital and the ones who buried him.”
As Jihadi John’s notoriety grew he became more remote, having been warned by the IS security bureau that he was a massive target for the CIA in the US.
His first known victim was James Foley, a US journalist who had been held with a number of Western hostages.
Foley was killed in a video that was released in August 2014 and his death was followed in the coming months with that of Brit Alan Henning, and Americans Peter Kassig and Steven Sotloff. Two Japanese civilians were also murdered. UK journalist John Cantlie survived the initial executions and was apparently forced to appear in pro-IS videos. He is feared to have been killed in Mosul, IS’s second HQ in Iraq.
Te l l i n g how Emwazi became remote after the killings, Kotey said: “At that time there was no contact between the wives because of security. We didn’t know where his house was because at the beginning of the beheadings he moved. Whenever he wanted to visit he’d come to our house. He never gave his location. I didn’t find out where he lived until he was killed. He was not far from me.”
Asked how he could have stayed friends with the killer, Kotey said: “It is difficult to understand maybe if you don’t have a friend who’s done that.
“I was there when he got married, I held his baby. I held him when he was shot and taking what I thought to be his last breath and he was passed out on my lap. When you go through experiences like that with someone...”
Kotey seemed then to remember to distance himself from the jihadi. He added: “I didn’t have a lot of interaction with him to be honest, to say if he changed as a person in Syria. I guess he took on more of a persona of leadership or someone who had a whole different level of responsibility.”
He claimed Jihadi John may not entirely have agreed with the IS leadership, despite being close to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the group’s Iraqi chief. He said: “I understood from him there were things he didn’t agree with but the difference between him and others was that he was prepared to be obedient towards the leadership.”
Asked if the instructions to behead hostages came from Baghdadi he replied: “Of course.” Asked about meetings between Baghdadi and Jihadi John, he said: “He met him. He prayed behind him in the Mosque in Mosul.”
But comparing the friend he came to Syria with to the thug Jihadi John, Kotey appeared to dismiss the beheadings. He said: “It’s not something I give a lot of thought about – when I think about him, what he done, despite my disagreement with what he done.
“It’s not something that overshadows my memories of him. They were very short. They were powerful messages but they were very short, two minutes of his life.”
But then he adds: “I can’t, erm, honestly turn a blind eye to them.”
I cried and decided to stay at home for a while and not speak to anybody ALEXANDA KOTEY ON HIS REACTION TO EMWAZI’S DEATH
BRITAIN’S most senior Islamic State terrorist still alive, Alexanda Kotey, has a family in Syria – and he wants them to live in the UK.
Kotey said he has a Syrian wife and three girls, aged five, three and one.
Gaunt and exhausted, 35-year-old Kotey apologised for his crimes but said he is “grateful” for his time in IS.
He said he is thankful because – overlooking the terror group’s unimaginable bloodshed and carnage – it led to him getting a jihadi bride.
Some women were forced to wed fighters but others saw it as an honour.
Kotey – dubbed “Ringo” in the notorious “Beatles” cell, which is thought to have participated in the killing of at least seven hostages – also claimed he is as “British as anyone”.
In our interview with him in prison, he admitted abusing Western prisoners before they were beheaded.
He claimed he regrets joining IS but, during the conversation in northern Syria, Kotey failed to completely hide his sinister side. He said of the
beheading videos: “I didn’t condemn it. That was the environment.”
He said that when he saw Jihadi John behead Westerners, he disapproved but merely asked: “Is there no other way to deal with these people?”
These are weak words that Kotey knows would make no difference to the bloodthirsty executioner who had become a close friend.
When asked if he would have beheaded people, Kotey replied: “I can’t say to be honest… I can’t say I agree with it and I don’t know what I would do in that situation…
“Obviously if there was a gun put to my head, I definitely… I wouldn’t know… I would do.”
He added he and other IS fighters laughed at the Jihadi John videos.
Kotey said: “Nobody thought they were beneficial in any way.
“We used to mock them, we would ridicule them…We would laugh at the state, obviously not laughing at the beheadings, but this was all staged.”
I demanded to know why he was laughing at the production values, given the content was so horrific.
He replied, grinning: “I remember looking at beheading videos from Chechnya… this was playground stuff.”
He added he watched a video of the IS beheading of British worker Ken Bigley, who was murdered in Iraq in 2004. Kotey said: “I saw this in the UK. What it did – it replaced Hollywood.
“I guess this is entertainment, unfortunately. There’s a large portion of people who see it as entertainment.”
Officials only confirmed the interview was going ahead five minutes before Kotey walked in.
Gone was the chest-sticking-out confidence he showed months ago when he first appeared and ranted about US-led bombings. IS excused its violence by saying it is comparable to Coalition attacks on jihadi targets, said to have killed many civilians in cities such as Raqqa and Mosul.
Coalition commanders admit civilians died, but IS has hidden fighters among the civilian population.
Kotey has defended IS atrocities. Now he is turning on the charm, admitting only to smaller crimes and distancing himself from IS leaders.
Many of the Western prisoners were beheaded after months of abuse.
I asked if he abused prisoners, and he replied: “Er, no. If you mean in the case of torture.” “You didn’t beat them up?” I asked. “Erm,” he replied. “Did you ever punch prisoners?” “Erm, probably I would have hit them, no punch, maybe yes, a slap or something, yes… Hitting is prison.”
He mentioned British aid worker Alan Henning, who was kidnapped in Syria and beheaded by Jihadi John in 2014. Kotey said: “Of course I have regret and this standard that they were kept in – the fact that even at the time, people clearly they had come for, to help like, erm… Alan.”
He talked about being a sniper, and I asked him if he has ever killed anyone. He said: “No, never.” It was hard to resist replying: “Then you must have been a rubbish sniper.”
Earlier an official told us: “This guy is very clever – don’t fall for it.
“He is very careful what he says and I do not believe he has given up his extremist views. He is dangerous.”
Kotey deployed control and subtle mind games, trying to appear polite.
He passed me tea, smiling, and asked “how many scoops of sugar?” while discussing beheadings, hangings and gay people being flung from rooftops in IS’s former HQ of Raqqa. Thousands of locals are thought to
have been killed in the city during the terrorists’ twisted five-year reign there.
Watched in the cell by a Kurdish security officer,Kotey explained his suspicious sudden cynicism towards IS, telling me: “My main regret is in joining any jihadi orientated organisation or group in Syria or anywhere.
“I mean, I don’t want that to be misinterpreted as a lack of gratitude as to what occurred. Here I married and had children so it would be ver y ungrateful.” He said he has a baby girl who had not been born when he last saw his wife, who he packed off to her family in wartorn Aleppo.
Kotey – who was seized and jailed by Western-backed SDF troops in 2017 north of Raqqa as he tried to flee to Turkey to escape the Coalition-led onslaught against the terror group – is also believed to have children in the UK. Asked exactly where his wife is, he said: “I would like to know myself. I don’t know.
“I know I had a baby daughter and she is my third daughter from my wife.
“I have not been allowed access to communicate with them.
“I prefer not to give her name. My kids’ names are oldest Mariam, five, Sajida, three, and the youngest is a year now – I don’t know her name.
“I sent my wife out before I left. She joined her… family in Aleppo. We were married since the beginning of 2013. We’ve been married for six years.”
He said he believes he will be free one day. When asked if he will see his
children again, he said: “I like to think so, yes.” Kotey, half Ghanaian and half Greek Cypriot, said he learned his wife contacted his mum in London.
He added he wants his wife to move to the UK, an ambition which is almost impossible given he has been stripped of his British citizenship.
Kotey said: “I know they have made some kind of contact back to the UK which got put on hold due to some kind of legal issue. There was an attempt to make contact with my mother which got cut, legal issues.”
He added: “As far as I’m concerned I am British and I’ll remain British. To
say I am not British is a big, bold statement or that anyone is more British than me because I made some mistakes – that’s also a big statement.”
We got into a debate about the IS perversion of Islam, and after he began to rant, I told him: “I am talking about throwing homosexuals from roofs – hanging people in the street…
“There’s no book where these horrors are advised… the hangings, beheadings, torching of pilots in cages.” But he said: “You can find a classical scholar who will justify it.”
Finally, we asked him what he would say to a 15-year-old Kotey whose ambition is to travel abroad for jihad, and he replied: “I would strongly advise him against it.”
We’d laugh at the videos. Not at the beheadings, but this was all staged ALEXANDA KOTEY ON TWISTED JIHADI JOHN ISIS EXECUTIONS
THE court of public opinion will have little sympathy for Britons who joined the e barbaric Islamic State murder cult.
You will make up your own mind after reading our exclusive report from the Syrian cell of Jihadi Ringo, a member of the terror squad once led by Jihadi John.
The brutality of the group known as “The Beatles” sickened the world – hostages’ lives s ended with revolting savagery. He may deserve a hearing, yet many minds are already made up. Laws must be obeyed and Britain must behave better than its enemies – but sympathy is in short supply.