The campus of hate and the making of a British terrorist butcher
So we finally know who was behind the executioner’s mask; those merciless eyes glaring defiantly at us and his victims; that chillingly familiar London accent; the Timberland boots underneath the black robes, the arm wielding a serrated dagger. They belong to a young man who, once upon a time, embraced British life to the full. Mohammed emwazi, 26, was a member of a local five-a-side-football team. He supported Manchester United, wore Nike-branded clothing, listened to music by pop group S Club 7, attended a Church of england school and was the beneficiary of a British university education.
Could his chilling reincarnation as Jihadi John, t he psychopath who beheaded western hostages, be a greater betrayal of everything this country has done for him and his family? Mohammed emwazi might have been born in Kuwait. But his murderous alter ego was made in Britain.
with hindsight, the road to Raqqa — the Islamic State’s Syrian stronghold — was clearly signposted.
He grew up in the streets around Ladbroke Grove, in the inner suburbs of west London — an area that has become a breeding ground for Islamic militancy and home-grown terror suspects.
He was befriended by Cage, the socalled campaign and human rights group, whose leading light is someone who has expressed support for the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate and for the principle of death by stoning for adultery.
And, perhaps most significantly of all, he went to the University of westminster, where, according to a report published yesterday, no fewer than 22 events have been held since March 2012, providing a platform for speakers with a history of extremist views or involvement with extremist organisations.
Proof, if any were needed, of how our much cherished, and deeply entrenched, tradition of free speech is being abused and corrupted on our own shores.
Still, those who knew him during his adolescent years could be forgiven for failing to understand that a man given so much by Britain could commit such atrocities against the west.
Consider how much this country did give Jihadi John. His parents arrived in London in 1993 with their son and his younger sister, now a young professional with a bright future ahead of her, in the aftermath of the Gulf war.
Four more siblings would be born in the UK. During those early years, the family were happily ensconced in west London, in an area bordering the wealthy and influential Notting Hill.
His father ran a taxi firm and his mother brought up the children. The emwazis frequently moved, swapping one rented property for another in the affluent Maida Vale area.
emwazi wore western clothing and became popular with his classmates at St Mary Magdalene C of e primary school in Maida Vale before enrolling at Quintin Kynaston, a successful academy in St John’s wood.
‘He was a diligent, hard-working, lovely young man; responsible, quiet,’ recalled a former teacher. ‘He was everything you could want a student to be.’
EMWAZI did well enough in his A-levels to gain a place on the computer programming course at the University of westminster in 2006. Campuses across the country have faced questions about their links between their student unions and extremists. But few could have more controversial track records than westminster.
only this week, the university was forced to postpone an invitation to radical cleric Haitham al-Haddad — who was due to address the Islamic Society — due to ‘increased sensitivity and security concerns’.
Haddad serves as a judge for the Islamic Sharia Council and is chairman of the Muslim Research and Development Foundation. This organisation says it is ‘devoted to the articulation of classical Islamic principles in a manner that provides a platform for Islam to be the cure of all humanity’s ills.’
Al- Haddad has been branded homophobic and is alleged to have described homosexuality as a ‘scourge’ and ‘a criminal act’. He has also stated that a ‘man should not be questioned why he hit his wife, because that is something between them’.
He has also claimed that Jews are descended from pigs.
The proposed visit by such a divisive — and poisonous — figure at the university was far from unusual.
This was laid bare in a report by the Henry Jackson Society, a think tank which works alongside Student Rights, an organisation set up to combat extremism in universities.
only last year, an equally unsavoury figure, Murtaza Khan, was invited to speak at the Islamic Society’s annual dinner. The title of his speech was ‘The Day of Judgment’.
Khan has a history of encouraging communal division, once asking: ‘For how long do we have to see our mothers, sisters, and daughters having to uncover themselves before these filthy non-Muslim doctors?’
He has also encouraged British Muslims to turn their back on our customs and rituals.
ON HIS website, he says: ‘...any of their pagan rituals and celebrations... it is not befitting for the Muslim to participate in t hem … this is what you call a contamination, an epidemic.’
In 2012, the Student Rights group found a number of videos featuring convicted terrorists and members of terrorist organisations overseas (in some cases with slide shows of insurgents involved in attacks) had been shared with students at the university via Facebook.
Four years ago, a student connected to the radical group Hizb ut-Tahrir was elected president of the Students’ Union. His vice-president also had links to the group, raising concerns that the union had been taken over by extremists.
‘Universities across the country, the University of westminster in particular, are being targeted by radical recruiters,’ said former westminster s t udent a nd Student Rights campaigner Raheem Kassam this week. ‘They tried it with me and they try it with any Muslim.
‘I remember very vividly how I would get cornered by three or four Somali guys — students in class with me who were dressed in non-western clothing — and they would say I must come along to the Islamic Society meetings, otherwise I am not a proper Muslim.
‘when you’re 18 years old and a practising Muslim you feel inclined to go. I went along and it absolutely disgusted me. I once walked into a meeting of the Islamic Society where they were clapping and cheering the events of 9/11.’
Yesterday, the University of westminster Islamic Society ( ISOC) posted a Facebook message denying it had any links with emwazi. ‘ The ISOC would like to clarify it has nothing to do with an individual who has come to be known as Jihadi John who
recently identified as Mohammed Emwazi. It is not associated with any extremist organisations and that should be obvious and not need stating.’
Shortly after he graduated in 2009, Mohammed Emwazi boarded a flight — with two ‘close friends’ — for Dar es Salaam, the Tanzanian capital.
They claimed they were going on safari but there was a much more sinister reason for the trip, it transpires.
On landing, the trio were met by border police, denied entry to the country, and put on a plane back to Amsterdam. It was here in the basement of Schiphol airport that Emwazi l ater claimed he was interrogated by MI5 who accused him of being a terrorist planning to join the Al Qaeda affiliate AlShabaab in Somalia.
He strenuously denied the accusation, insisting he had only been a tourist heading for safari and bragging that he would not take a designer Rocawear sweater in his luggage if he was intending to join up with Somalian rebels. In emails to campaign group Cage, he said the MI5 agent, ‘knew everything about me, where I lived, what I did, the people I hanged around with.’
The agent, he said, then tried to recruit him before finally handing him a piece of paper with the agent’s number on it and the words ‘We’ll see you in London mate.’
AND over the next four years or so the security services and police questioned him or members of his family on a dozen occasions in an attempt to ‘to turn him.’ ‘Harassment’, Emwazi called it. ‘The constant stream of extremist speakers and material uncovered since 2011 [at Westminster University] and the f act that Emwazi is alleged to have travelled to Tanzania to j oin AlShabaab after his graduation shows he was very likely to have studied in an atmosphere highly conducive to radicalisation,’ said Students Rights director Rupert Sutton yesterday.
‘It is vital that other institutions learn from his example, and ensure they are actively challenging extremism wherever it appears on their campuses.’
In fact, there can be little doubt Emwazi was en route for Somalia.
Court documents relating to a Home Office control order — supposed to keep a terror suspect under close supervision — reveal that Mohammed Emwazi was part of an established network of extremists around Ladbroke Grove, most of them well known to the security services.
A number have gone to fight in Syria, but others trained with Al- Shabaab in Somalia or were involved in the ‘provision of funds a nd e quipment to Somalia to undertake terroris mrelated activity.’
Emwazi also moved in the same circles as Ibrahim Magag, a Somaliborn former train conductor from London involved in ‘financial support for Al Qaeda’.
At the flat in West London where Emwazi most recently lived with his parents and two of his sisters, a neighbour said: ‘They are strange people — not like other people around here. He [Emwazi] would not say hello — he was unfriendly.’
Emwazi vanished sometime in 2013. His parents reported him missing after three days but claimed it was four months before police arrived on their doorstep and told them they had information he was in Syria.
His father, 51, told police they were wrong, that his son was in Turkey, helping refugees from Syria.
The family are said to continue to deny that he is the IS masked executioner, who first introduced himself to the world on August 19 last year. In the now infamous video, he was dressed from head to toe in black.
next to him, kneeling in the desert terrain was American journalist James Foley, who was about to become his first victim. Mohammed Emwazi may have wielded the dagger that killed him and five other Western hostages — but let’s be in no doubt that he learnt the hate for non-Muslims which consumes him on British shores.