NPR's Kelly McEvers speaks with Washington Post contributor Souad Mekhennet. The Post broke the news about the identity of "Jihadi John," the masked man with a British accent who has beheaded several hostages held by the Islamic State and who speaks directly to the camera in ISIS videos. The identity was revealed as Mohammed Emwazi, a Briton from a well-to-do family who grew up in West London and graduated college with a degree in computer programming.
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Transcript
KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
Details are emerging about Jihadi John. This is the masked man who apparently executed American, British and Japanese hostages on video for the so-called Islamic State. U.S. officials have confirmed to NPR, the man in videos is Mohammed Emwazi. Washington Post contributor Souad Mekhennet broke the story today. Mekhennet interviewed Emwazi's friends and relatives. Few were willing to go on record for fear of being investigated. An official from a London human rights group called CAGE did speak to her on record. And Souad Mekhennet joins us from London.
SOUAD MEKHENNET: Hi, how are you?
MCEVERS: So you were told by one of Mohammed Emwazi's close friends that he was sure that Jihadi John was, in fact, Emwazi. He even said to you, you know, he was like a brother to me. What made him so certain that that's who it was?
MEKHENNET: Well, he actually said that he recognized him especially from the eyes and the voice, but also said that the body language and the whole appearance so-called Jihadi John was actually the one of Mohammed Emwazi.
MCEVERS: And so what you did find out from these friends and from other sources was that Emwazi was born in Kuwait - right? - and that he at some point moved to London when he was young. Where in London did he grow up?
MEKHENNET: Well, he actually grew up in a very nice area in west London. And it's not at all one of the so-called problematic areas where we had cases of many people leaving from there.
MCEVERS: So he grew up in this neighborhood - this nice neighborhood. He was religious. He prayed. And he also liked to wear nice clothes and these things?
MEKHENNET: Yes. He was actually somebody who came across as very posh. You know, he was wearing designer clothes - I mean not like high-level designer clothes, but labels.
MCEVERS: And when do his friends and some of these other sources you talked to believe that Emwazi started to have more radical ideas?
MEKHENNET: According to officials, they believe that Emwazi has already been on the path to radicalization when he traveled to Tanzania in 2009. So he, himself, described in a couple of e-mails and letters which he exchanged with an organization, CAGE, which is based in London, that he had been accused by an MI5 agent of having planned to travel to Somalia and actually join al-Shabab. So from the officials' point of views, they believe that Emwazi back then already had been in circles. Now, his friends and distant family members would say that he got more radicalized when he got stuck in Britain - so between the years 2010 and 2012.
MCEVERS: Right. And this is when he had wanted to go back to Kuwait to plan a wedding but wasn't allowed?
MEKHENNET: Exactly. That's what he said and what some of his friends claim. But we have, of course, not the accounts so far from the British authorities.
MCEVERS: So then when was the last time this organization received an e-mail from Emwazi?
MEKHENNET: According to the research director of this organization, CAGE, he had heard from Emwazi in January 2012. He, himself, tried to reach out to Emwazi in an e-mail in 2014, not knowing that Emwazi was already in Syria.
MCEVERS: And he never got a response to that e-mail?
MEKHENNET: No.
MCEVERS: Souad Mekhennet, contributor to The Washington Post, thank you so much.
MEKHENNET: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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