Jihadi John

The Making of a Terrorist

Robert Verkaik

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781780749440
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Terrorismus

It was a defining moment, the first time 'Jihadi John' appeared. Suddenly Islamic State had a face and the whole world knew the extent of their savagery. Weeks later, when his identity was revealed, Robert Verkaik was shocked to realise that this was a man he'd interviewed years earlier.Back in 2010, Mohammed Emwazi was a twenty-one-year-old IT graduate who claimed the security services were ruining his life. They had repeatedly approached him, his family and his fiancée. Had they been tracking an already dangerous extremist or did they push him over the edge?In the aftermath of the US air strike that killed Emwazi in November 2015, Verkaik's investigation leads him to deeply troubling questions. What led Emwazi to come to him for help in the first place? And why do hundreds of Britons want to join Islamic State? In an investigation both frightening and urgent, Verkaik goes beyond the making of one terrorist to examine the radicalisation of our youth and to ask what we can do to stop it happening in future.

Chapter 1

MOHAMMED THE OUTSIDER

Mohammed Emwazi’s family belonged to the Bedoon or Bidun minority, the people of Kuwait who are not recognized as full citizens. Bedoon means ‘without’ in Arabic and refers to their stateless designation. In the 1950s Emwazi’s grandfather was a respected tribal leader, but he had refused to accept a Kuwaiti passport offered by the government during the country’s first census, which led to the declaration of independence in 1961. He was, according to a family friend, a proud man who felt confident in his position in tribal society and regarded a passport as little more than a state handout. But his pride and, more importantly, his decision to reject Kuwaiti nationality, would have damaging repercussions for the Emwazis for many generations.1

In the 1980s Mohammed Emwazi’s father Jassem had overcome his statelessness and found work as a policeman in Tayma’a, a town twenty miles north west of Kuwait City in the district of al-Jahra. According to a family member, Jassem was very proud of his job and had his services to law and order recognized by the Kuwaiti government.2 The family have kept a certificate presented to Jassem by the Kuwait police force which includes a citation referring to his loyalty and good work.

Tayma’a, or Taima as it is also known, is a ghettoized, urban sprawl where the Bedoon live among corrugated buildings, set apart from the Kuwaiti population. Traditionally Bedoon migrants are taken on as soldiers in the lower ranks of the Kuwaiti army. In the 1980s, those who weren’t given a military post often ended up scraping a living selling street food or begging. Jassem was one of the lucky few who escaped the hardships of a life on the fringes of society.3

By 1987 his prospects looked even brighter. He met Ghaneya, an immigrant from Yemen, and received her family’s blessing to marry her. Friends at the time remember the Emwazis were prosperous enough to hold the ceremony in a large white tent.4 Ghaneya conceived in the months after the wedding, and the Emwazis had everything they could have hoped for – a good job, a loving family and the unusual freedom to mix with both the Bedoon and the local Kuwaitis.

But in 1989 Kuwait’s 200,000-strong Bedoon population faced a sectarian crackdown.5 The world was in the grip of an economic downturn and Kuwait decided to put the squeeze on the Bedoon, as a sop to the country’s own working class struggling under the financial hardships.6 There was also historical suspicion that the Bedoon held no loyalty to Kuwait and that many still regarded Iraq as their natural home.7 These long-held resentments fuelled allegations of fifth-columnist penetration linked to a spate of terrorist attacks against the Kuwait government.8

And so at a stroke the Bedoon were wiped from Kuwait’s official census. Overnight, they were stripped of their rights to passports or other identification papers, leaving them unable to obtain birth, death or marriage certificates.9 Because of this, the Bedoon were forbidden from holding driving licences, sending their children to school or accessing hospital care. Even housing and social security were denied to them.10 Any Bedoon with a job had his or her employment status reviewed.11 Officially the Emwazis, along with the rest of the Kuwaiti Bedoon population, did not exist.12

For the Emwazis, who had little Mohammed on the way and were planning life as a new family, the sectarian crackdown represented an extraordinary reversal of fortune. For Jassem personally it meant the real possibility of losing his job and the end of a steady income which the family had come to rely on. This, however, was just the beginning of their troubles, as events in the region were about to take a dramatic turn for the worse.

Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, had long harboured territorial ambitions over Kuwait and in 1990 launched a lightning assault, taking Kuwait’s complacent generals by surprise. The comparatively small military forces of the oil-rich Gulf state were quickly overwhelmed by the world’s fourth largest army. The country’s ruler, Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmed al-Sabah, fled into exile in his armour-plated Mercedes, across the desert to neighbouring Saudi Arabia. He was soon followed by Kuwait’s wealthy sheikhs, businessmen and anyone else who had the resources to escape. The Kuwaiti state was turned over to the new Iraqi rulers.

For the Bedoon, having recently been made stateless, the situation was particularly dire. Jassem Emwazi, who did not have the funds or contacts to follow the exodus, found himself at the mercy of a brutal regime that had a history of oppressing the Bedoon. The family quickly had to learn how to survive in a martial state that considered the Kuwaiti Bedoon to be traitors and enemies of Iraq.13 At the same time they had to be equally careful of not falling under the suspicion of Kuwaitis, who suspected the Iraqi Bedoon of helping the invaders.

In February 1991 the American-led coalition forces launched a sustained air and ground assault on Iraqi forces inside Kuwait. It took just four days for Saddam’s armies to be cleared from Kuwait but not before a major attack on an Iraqi armoured division stationed on the outskirts of al-Jahra. Thousands of Iraqi soldiers were burned to death in their vehicles when the leader of the coalition forces, General Norman Schwarzkopf, issued orders to blockade a hundred-mile radius of Kuwait City. The retreating Iraqi convoys, stalled on Mutla Ridge on Highway 80 just outside the town, became sitting ducks for the Apache helicopters and fighter-bombers which were launched against them.

While the Americans and their Saudi allies celebrated the vanquishing of Saddam and the alleviation of the threat to oil security, the returning Kuwaitis began the business of settling scores. The authorities acted ruthlessly against the Bedoon, sending thousands to Iraq and into the arms of Saddam. Although the Emwazis, who had no real links with Iraq, escaped deportation, they remained discriminated against and lived in constant fear of forced removal.14

Given their persecution by domestic authorities just as much as foreign invaders, it is easy to see how a sense of alienation and resentment may have become deeply rooted in the Emwazi family’s psyche. Jassem had not entirely given up on Kuwait but over the next few years his prospects became bleaker than ever.15

So in 1993 when Mohammed was aged six, the Emwazis decided to take a chance on a new life in the West. They settled on Britain because they had distant relatives who had moved to London and had sent back stories of a city in which many creeds and colours mixed freely with one another.16 Most importantly, for Jassem, this included the Bedoon, who were not regarded as a pariah people but genuine refugees.

On arrival in the UK the couple put their case for asylum to the Home Office and argued that they had been denied citizenship by Kuwait.17 The Home Office has published guidance which shows that those who can prove they are Kuwaiti Bedoon will be usually granted refugee status in the UK. However, the guidance by no means guarantees the right to asylum. It makes clear: ‘The individual circumstances of Bidoon in Kuwait vary greatly. All can be stigmatized through their lack of status, and the extra difficulty they can face in accessing government services. However some have close links with Kuwaiti families, and possess the support networks, contacts and wealth to circumvent any obstacles.’

The Home Office guidance also sets out the most likely ground for Kuwaiti Bedoon seeking asylum in the UK around the time the Emwazis were living in the Middle East. It says:

Internal instability in the mid-1980s, linked in particular to Kuwaiti support for Iraq against Iran during the Iran–Iraq war, led to a series of bombings, assassination attempts and minor civil disorder, sponsored by Iran. This led to a security clamp-down by the Kuwaiti authorities. In particular, the fact that a small number of Bidoon were implicated in terrorist offences caused the Kuwaiti government to look again at their status.

Britain was aware that some Bedoon had collaborated with Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and may have contributed to their own statelessness. The guidance continues: ‘Between the mid-1980s and the 1990 Invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, there was a further erosion of the rights of the Bedoon, including the right to free education. Some were directly affected. Others were cushioned by their positions in government service or by other personal connections.’

The government guidance meant that members of the Bedoon entering the UK were not automatically granted asylum and it explicitly authorized immigration staff to ask testing questions about their claims.

The Home Office took three years to deliberate before officials agreed to grant the Emwazi family asylum. Three years is a long time for an immigration case to be settled even factoring in Britain’s often grindingly slow legal system. Certainly, three years allowed ample time for immigration case officers to fact-check the Emwazi family’s story, and to trace their recent history. The Home Office would not have relied solely on the family’s testimony and would have tried to secure independent evidence to prove there was a genuine and well-founded case of persecution in Kuwait. Any suggestion that the Emwazis had supported Iraqi invaders would have helped their case as this would have made it difficult for them to return to Kuwait.

Omar Emwazi, Mohammed’s twenty-two year-old younger brother, insists his father was a loyal Kuwaiti citizen who was vehemently opposed to Saddam. ‘When the papers tried to say that [he was pro Saddam Hussein], my mum found that certificate [presented to his father by the Kuwaiti police force] to show me what nonsense it was.’

In 1996 the application was accepted by the British immigration officials and the family was finally granted asylum.18 The Emwazis settled in the affluent west London suburb of Maida Vale, where they had Kuwaiti relatives.19 But they were by no means affluent themselves. With a young and growing family, the Emwazis moved home four times in the same area. Their first home was a three-bedroomed first floor flat in Warwick Crescent. From there, they moved to a run-down terrace in nearby Desborough Close, overlooked by council blocks.

Jassem found work as a minicab and delivery van driver while Ghaneya stayed at home with Mohammed, his three younger sisters and his younger brother.20 Local residents described the family as close and caring, with both parents arriving at the school gate each day to collect their children. They spoke Arabic around the home and attended the local mosque. As in Kuwait, Ghaneya tended to wear traditional Islamic clothes and whenever she left the house she wore a niqab.21

But this was not a strict Muslim household. ‘They were just normal Muslims, I don’t think Mohammed was particularly religious and I don’t think the family forced them to be religious,’ a family friend told me.22 In fact, Mohammed went to St Mary Magdalene Church of England primary school.

Interviews with his teachers and fellow pupils show that on the outside he was no different to the other little boys. He liked S Club 7 and wanted to be a professional footballer.23 When he was ten, Mohammed Emwazi’s ambition for his thirty-yea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Imprint Page
• Contents
• Prologue
• 1 MOHAMMED THE OUTSIDER
• 2 THE JIHADI JOHN NETWORK
• 3 MI5 AND THE HORN OF AFRICA
• 4 FACE TO FACE WITH JIHADI JOHN
• 5 SUBJECT OF INTEREST
• 6 ROAD TO SYRIA
• 7 BEHEADINGS THAT SHOCKED THE WORLD
• 8 THE UNMASKING OF JIHADI JOHN
• 9 THE TERRORIST THREAT
• 10 HOW TO BEAT THE TERRORISTS
• Acknowledgements
• Notes
• Index