He hid his face, but “Jihadi John” was the English-speaking voice of ISIS. His twisted, videotaped taunts and acts of terrible cruelty — beheading hostages who had gone to the Middle East to help others and report stories to the world — symbolized the Islamist militant group’s depravity and ruthlessness.
Not anymore, it appears.
In announcing a drone strike Thursday night, the Pentagon did not say definitively that Mohammed Emwazi had been killed. But officials expressed confidence he is dead.
The United States had been tracking him closely since Wednesday, and the next he was seen leaving a building and getting into a car with an unknown person, U.S. officials said. Three drones went after them. Two missiles were fired at Emwazi’s vehicle.
Speaking Friday, British Prime Minister David Cameron cast the airstrike as an act of self-defense. If it is confirmed Emwazi is dead, “it will strike at the heart of ISIS,” said Cameron, whose government worked with their U.S. colleagues ahead of the strike.
“We always said we will do whatever is necessary to track down Emwazi and stop him taking the lives of others,” he said.
But there was no joy or sense of victory from Louise Woodward-Styles. Her friend, British aid worker David Haines, was among the hostages whose beheading videos featured Emwazi. Others included American journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, U.S. aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, British aid worker David Haines and Japanese journalist Kenji Goto.
“There’s just sadness,” Woodward-Styles said. “It reminds you of the loss of Alan and just hoping it’s closure for the family. But also I hope it reminds people that the issue of Syria is still ongoing, and not to forget the reasons why Alan was there.”
As to Emwazi himself, Woodward-Styles added, “I don’t think he deserves the attention that his apparent death is causing. I think he was a coward.”
Justice for ‘victims of this evil man’
Emwazi, a British citizen, has been a most wanted man.
As the masked face of ISIS, he appeared in a series of brutal videos, dressed head-to-toe in black — his eyes and voice his lone revealing features — and holding a knife.
The Ramadhan Foundation, a Muslim organization in the UK, called Emwazi the manifestation of evil.
“The killing of Mohammed Emwazi in Syria is a significant moment in the fight to get justice for David Haines, Alan Henning and all the victims of this evil man,” said Mohammed Shafiq, the group’s executive director.
That sentiment wasn’t shared by CAGE, the London-based civil rights group that had contact with Emwazi. It tweeted that relatives of the beheaded hostages “have mixed feelings” about the targeted airstrike, with some preferring he be captured rather than killed.
The group itself stated “its opposition to extrajudicial killing of any kind,” adding that “state-sponsored targeted assassinations undercut the judicial processes that provide the lessons by which spirals of violence can be stopped.”
Rather than be killed, CAGE said, Emwazi should have been tried as a war criminal. Because that won’t happen, the world will never know what spurred him — and many others in the West and beyond — to join ISIS.
“His killing means key crucial questions around his joining ISIS, as well as the kidnapping and killing of hostages will remain unanswered,” CAGE tweeted.
A frequent video presence
Syrian activists in Raqqa reported that four ISIS foreign fighters, including a leader with British nationality, were killed by the coalition airstrike, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
If that British leader is Emwazi, it would be a significant step in the anti-ISIS fight for the West — at least symbolically, though it is unknown what operational role he played in the group.
By his own account, Emwazi was born in Kuwait, and it is believed he moved to London as a child. Friends believe he started down the road to radicalization when he traveled to Tanzania in 2009, the Washington Post reported this year.
He was supposed to be going on safari in the East African nation, but he was reportedly detained on arrival, held overnight and then deported. He was also detained by counterterrorism officials in Britain in 2010, the Post said. Authorities have not disclosed the reasons for those reported detentions.
“I had a job waiting for me and marriage to get started,” he wrote in a June 2010 email to Asim Qureshi, a member of CAGE, The Post reported. “[But now] I feel like a prisoner, only not in a cage, in London. A person imprisoned & controlled by security service men, stopping me from living my new life in my birthplace & country, Kuwait,” the email said.
Emwazi is believed to have traveled to Syria in 2012 and joined ISIS there. He soon became a regular in hostage videos and participated in beheadings.
For some periods of time this year, Emwazi was not seen in videos, though U.S. officials told CNN in July they had learned he was alive and hiding near Raqqa.
Analysts describe him as grotesque and fond of sadistic torture techniques, with one former hostage recounting last month how his captor made him dance the tango with him.
“Suddenly, he changed and just pushed me down,” Daniel Rye, a 26-year-old photographer, recalled to Danish broadcaster DR. “They kicked and hit me. They finished by threatening to cut my nose off with pliers and things like that.”
