How The US And UK Tracked Down And Killed Jihadi John

The killing of Mohammed Emwazi, also known as Jihadi John, was the culmination of 15 months of intensive intelligence work by MI6, GCHQ and the CIA

For Jihadi John, death could not have been more different than that of his victims. While his hostages suffered unimaginable horror as he beheaded them, for him the end came instantaneously and without warning.

For more than a year British and US intelligence agencies had been trying to gain live information on the whereabouts of the masked man whose first victim, the American journalist James Foley, was murdered in a video posted on YouTube in August 2014.

Their efforts finally paid off shortly before midnight on Thursday, when intelligence pinpointed him to a car in the centre of Raqqa, Syria, within a short walk of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s headquarters in the old governorate building.

Mohammed Emwazi – his real name was finally confirmed by David Cameron for the first time today – is understood to have been located by either MI6 or GCHQ, either through a human source on the ground or by monitoring his communications.

Emwazi beheaded (clockwise, from top left) David Haines, James Foley, Alan Henning, Peter Kassig and Steven Sotloff

The intelligence was passed on to the Pentagon, enabling the operators of an armed Predator drone already in the sky above Raqqa to spot the car in which he was travelling.

At 11.40pm Syrian time (8.40pm GMT) the order to kill was passed to the drone operators at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada.

Controlling their drone via a satellite link, and using a second Reaper as a “spotter” plane, they selected their target and released a Hellfire missile from 10,000ft.

Experts say the Predator may have been several miles away at the time, invisible in the night sky. Its missile, travelling at Mach 1.3 (995mph) arrived at such speed that Emwazi would have known nothing before it struck. At 11.51pm the car, and its four occupants, were blown to pieces.

The result was described by one US official as a “flawless” strike, a “clean hit” that would have “evaporated” Emwazi, with no collateral damage. “We are 99 per cent sure we got him,” the official said.

Unconfirmed reports suggested another of those killed was another of the four British jihadis nicknamed “The Beatles” by their captives because of their English accents. Emwazi, 27, was given the nickname John after John Lennon.

Emwazi’s death, if confimed, was doubly symbolic for the allied forces that hunted him down. Not only was Isil’s main propaganda tool neutralised, but the location of the strike was within sight of two of the locations most strongly identified with the terrorist group.

The missile strike happened in or next to Clocktower Square, the roundabout chosen by Isil to carry out public executions.

In 2012, the roundabout was the location of the city’s first protests against Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, as a popular uprising spread across the country. By the summer of 2013, Isil had seized control of the city, and video footage from May of that year shows three rebel soldiers, blindfolded with a green rag reminiscent of the colours of the revolution, before being shot dead.

Emwazi is understood to have been travelling from the Isil headquarters, inside what was once the office of Raqqa's city governor. He may also have been living in the building.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said its own sources had confirmed that a British jihadi had been killed in the strike. Rami Abdulrahman, director of the British-based group, said: "All the sources there are saying that the body of an important British Jihadi is lying in the hospital of Raqqa. All the sources are saying it is of Jihadi John but I cannot confirm it personally."

A senior U.S. official said the drone strike was the result of "persistent surveillance” and that the Pentagon knew it was Emwazi when the shot was taken.

Drones routinely fly for 16 hours or more, and the drone that killed Emwazi could have been circling overhead for several hours, waiting for an opportunity, and is likely to have stayed overhead afterwards to see if anyone got out of the car alive.

Britain and America had always maintained they were working around the clock to find Emwazi, but the apparent extent of its surveillance capabilities over Raqqa had not been clear until now.

The strike suggests he was under tight surveillance, combining human informants with sophisticated technology.

The hunt for Mohammed Emwazi began at the end of 2012, when the security services first suspected he was in Syria. He had been reported missing by his family in August of that year, having left the family home in Queen’s Park, north London and lied about where he was going.

Jihadi John, the then unidentified Isil executioner, became a top priority for MI6 after his video of Foley’s beheading, titled A Message to America, was posted last year.

The first step was to identify the masked, black-clad figure in the footage. With only his eyes visible, intelligence officers on both sides of the Atlantic examined other clues, primarily his voice and accent, but also his skin colour, height, physique and vein patterns on his hands. By September 14 last year his name was known to the UK and US governments.

British and American special forces operating in Syria for the past year have been gathering human intelligence on senior jihadists, paying informers and carrying out snatch raids on low-level commanders who can then be interrogated.

Raqqa, however, has proved impossible for them to infiltrate, so instead an RAF Rivet Joint spy plane, based at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, has been crisscrossing Syria for more than a year, “hoovering up” calls and messages for analysis by spies.

Much of the communications chatter was analysed at Ayios Nikolaos, a top secret listening station in Cyprus and the largest UK overseas spy base.

Manned by UK military intelligence officers working for GCHQ, its highly sensitive dome shaped radars have the capability to “look out” over the horizon for up to 400 miles and pull in information from UK warships and submarines deployed in the region.

Despite reports that he had fled to Libya or had been expelled from Isil, the intelligence agencies remained confident he was still in Raqqa, even though he went quiet after his last beheadings, of two Japanese hostages in January.

An air strike targeting a German colleague of Emwazi last month may have been the first sign that Britain and America were hot on his trail, according to security expert Neil Doyle.

An air strike last month targeting a Denis Cuspert, a German associate of Emwazi who mixed in the same circles as him, may have been the first sign that Britain and America were hot on his trail.

David Cameron said Britain and the US had been working "literally around the clock to track him down". He added: "This was a combined effort. And the contribution of both our countries was essential."

Col Steve Warren, a spokesman for the US-led military coalition fighting Isil, said: “This is significant. He was somewhat of an Isil celebrity, somewhat the face of the organisation...he was a prime recruitment tool for the organisation. This guy was a human animal and killing him does probably make the world a little bit of a better place.”

He said coalition forces had been following Emwazi “for some time” and commanders had “great confidence” it was him before they gave the order to kill. The strike had been captured on video and there was no reason to believe any civilian casualties had been caught in the blast, Col Warren said.

Additional reporting by Ben Farmer, Tom Morgan, Richard Spencer and Louisa Loveluck

From Mohammed Emwazi to Jihadi John

The making of a terrorist

1988

Mohammed Emwazi is born

Emwazi is born in Kuwait. He moves to Britain at the age of six.

2009

Graduates from Westminster

Emwazi graduates from the University of Westminster with a degree in computer science and arranges to marry a woman in Kuwait.

August 2009

Travels to Tanzania

Emwazi goes to Tanzania with two friends, apparently on a safari holiday. They are stopped at Dar-es-Salaam airport and denied entry. They are flown to Schiphol and questioned. Their interrogators are believed to include an officer from MI5.

September 2009

Emwazi leaves Britain

Emwazi travels to Kuwait to stay with his father’s family.

May 2010

Emwazi returns to Britain

He is stopped at Heathrow, but allowed back into the country, before returning to Kuwait once more.

July 2010

Six-hour questioning at Heathrow

He returns to Britain, is questioned at Heathrow for six hours. The following day he tries to go back to Kuwait, but is denied a visa and has to remain in Dubai.

2012

Becomes an English language teacher

Emwazi earns a qualification as an English language teacher, applies unsuccessfully for jobs in Saudi Arabia.

2013

Becomes Mohammed al-Ayan

Emwazi changes his name to Mohammed al-Ayan. Makes another unsuccessful attempt to get into Kuwait.

August 2014

"Jihadi John" executes James Foley

Dressed from top to toe in black, “Jihadi John” makes his first public appearance in a video in which he executes James Foley, an American journalist.

September 2014

Steven Sotloff is killed

Emwazi appears in a second video in which Steven Sotloff, another American journalist, is beheaded. "I'm back, Obama, and I'm back because of your arrogant foreign policy toward the Islamic State."

September 2014

David Haines is killed

Emwazi kills his first British hostage, David Haines, a Scottish aid worker and threatens David Cameron, whom he describes as a lapdog.

October 2014

Alan Henning is killed

Emwazi appears in another video showing the beheading of Alan Henning a British taxi driver and aid worker.

November 2014

Emwazi appears with a severed head

Emwazi, again dressed in black, appears in a video with a severed head, which he says is Peter Kassig, an American aid worker.

January 2015

$200 million demand for Japanese hostages

Emwazi demands $200 million to spare the lives of two Japanese hostages, Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa

November 2015

Jihadi John 'dead'

Emwazi is reported to have been targeted – and according to one source “eviscerated “ - in a US raid.

Culled from telelgraph.co.uk