Passport blunders by police let jihadi killer flee to Islamic State
POLICE asked ‘the new Jihadi John’ to phone them and surrender his passport six weeks after he fled to join Islamic State, it emerged last night.
Officers waited a month before checking why terror suspect Siddhartha Dhar had failed to give up the travel document.
They then wrote him a polite letter asking ‘could you please contact the police on the telephone number listed above’.
Londoner Dhar is the prime suspect as the masked man in the latest IS video. The blackclad figure, seen presiding over the execution of five ‘spies’ in Syria, styles himself like Jihadi John – real name Mohammed Emwazi – who was killed in a US drone strike in November.
Yesterday a row erupted over how easily 32-year-old Dhar had slipped out of the UK in 2014, despite having been arrested six times and being on police bail at the time.
Within two days of his arrest the ex-bouncy castle salesman, who converted to Islamic extremism from Hinduism, had boarded a Parisbound coach at Victoria bus station in London with his pregnant wife and four children.
In the Commons yesterday, shadow home secretary Andy Burnham brandished a copy of the farcical letter, obtained by Channel 4 News, and demanded Home Secretary Theresa May launch an inquiry into a ‘serious lapse in security’.
Dhar was arrested on suspicion of encouraging terrorism and supporting banned group Al Muhajiroun. He was freed on police bail on September 26, 2014, on condition he handed in his passport by October 3.
Almost immediately he skipped bail for Syria – yet it was not until November 7 that police wrote to him, saying: ‘It has come to our notice that [the passport] condition has not been complied with.
‘Are there any changes to your circumstances that the police need to be aware of? Could you please contact the police on the telephone number listed above as a matter of urgency?’
The l etter suggests officers
‘Serious questions’
repeatedly knocked at his home in Walthamstow, East London, but ‘there has been no reply’.
Mr Burnham asked Mrs May: ‘Does this in any way sound adequate to the seriousness of the charges concerned? It was clear he had left the country long before this letter was sent. How can someone on bail for terrorismrelated offences travel to Syria?’
He added: ‘ How many other individuals are currently on bail for terror offences?’
Mrs May condemned the IS video as ‘barbaric and appalling’, but refused to comment on an ‘ongoing police investigation’.
David Anderson QC, the Government’s independent reviewer of anti-terror legislation, told BBC Radio 4’s World at One: ‘With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to think a police officer should have accompanied this person to his home and ensured the passport was handed over.’
Keith Vaz, chairman of the home affairs select committee, said: ‘Serious questions need to be asked about what went wrong so that it never happens again.’
After joining IS, Dhar posted a photo of himself cradling his baby and brandishing an AK-47. He followed Al Qaeda preacher Omar Bakri Mohammed’s teachings, and was said to have mentored one of Lee Rigby’s murderers, Michael Adebolajo. Last year he posted an essay online defending IS executions and claiming the likes of Jihadi John had the ‘moral high ground’ over the West.
Last night his sister Konika Dhar said he had been a typical teenager. An ex- classmate at Broomfield School, north London, described him as ‘a bit of a loner’. Dhar was an Arsenal fan who liked rock bands Nirvana and Linkin Park. He would gel his hair, date girls, watch US action films and drink Baileys at Christmas and the Hindu festival Diwali.
He wanted to be a dentist, but friends claim his father’s death when he was 16 sparked a huge change. He became more and more radical and joined Muslims Against Crusaders.
Dhar said in an interview on the BBC’s Sunday Morning Live in 2014: ‘Now we have this caliphate I think you’ll see many Muslims globally seeing it as an opportunity for the Koran to be realised … I would like to see the UK governed by the Sharia [law].’
In May last year, he wrote a guide to IS to recruit other Brit- ons, boasting how ‘the caliphate offers an exquisite Mediterranean climate’ and ‘serves some of the best lattes and cappuccinos’.
Yesterday former neighbours suggested his wife Aisha may have helped to radicalise him.
Dhar has not been confirmed as the man in the video, but intelligence analysts are focusing on the ‘probability’ it is him, according to BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner. A police source
‘Clear he had left the country’
said the delay in chasing up Dhar ‘should have been flagged up quicker’ but added that ‘you can’t hold someone indefinitely while one of their relatives looks for their passport’.
A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: ‘Ensuring conditions of bail are met is not just the responsibility of the police service, but also involves other agencies.’