Jihadi John Connected to British Intelligence

The man said to be Jihadi John, a 27-year-old Briton named Mohammed Emwazi, has a connection to British intelligence.

The Washington Post named Emwazi as ISIS’ Jihadi John

Emwazi is said to be the executioner in a number of ISIS videos, according to the U.S. government. The legitimacy of the beheading productions are disputed by experts.

According to The Daily Mail, Emwazi claimed the “MI5 knew ‘everything about me; where I lived, what I did, and the people I hanged around with’ and claimed the organization attempted to ‘turn’ him to work for them.”

Emwazi claimed to have been harassed and intimidated by security services in 2009 when he flew to Tanzania with friends on a safari. He was arrested in Dar es Salaam and sent back to Britain. In a stop over in Amsterdam, however, an MI5 agent allegedly accused him of trying to reach Somalia to join the terrorist group Al Shabaab.

According to the Daily Mail, Emwazi filed a harassment claim with the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

The following year, Emwazi was arrested when he returned to Britain from his native Kuwait. He was subsequently placed on a terror watch list.

Michael Adebolajo, one of the two killers of Fusilier (a British term for solider) Lee Rigby in London in 2013, also complained of harassment by the British secret service.

British Intelligence: Funding Terror Projects and Protecting Terror Suspects

British intelligence has played a key role in creating and fomenting terrorism.

As documented by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquié, authors of The Forbidden Truth, in 1996 British intelligence paid al-Qaeda around $160,00 to fund an assassination plot against Libyan leader Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi. The British press was banned from discussing the case.

A member of the group, Anas al-Liby, was given political asylum in Britain. He lived there until May 2000 despite being an important al-Qaeda figure who would later be implicated in the alleged al-Qaeda bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

In the late 1990s British intelligence recruited, groomed and protected a number of terrorist figures, including Abu Qatada. The radical imam told MI5 agents he exercised “powerful, spiritual influence over the Algerian community in London,” said he would look after the interests of the British state, and “would not bite the hand that fed him.”

Qatada would later figure as a key figure in terror. “The authorities said that a number of people arrested in connection with terrorism had described Abu Qatada’s influence. Richard Reid, the would-be mid-Atlantic shoe bomber, and Zacarias Moussaoui, both jailed for involvement in terrorism, are said to have sought religious advice from him. The cleric’s sermons were found in a flat in the German city of Hamburg used by some of those involved in 9/11,” the BBC reported.

A friend of Qatada’s, Bisher al-Rawi, would later become a key operative for British intelligence. He acted as a go-between for Qatada and MI5, The Independent reported in March, 2006.

Another important figure on the “Londonistan” scene was Abu Hamza al-Masri, the imam presiding over the infamous Finesbury Park mosque, described as “a first port of call, a meeting place and a haven for terror suspects arriving and operating in the UK,” including Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui. “Hamza, as the imam of the mosque and its central figure, wielded a powerful influence over those who passed through its doors,” The Independent reported.

Hamza began working for British intelligence and police in 1997. He informed on fellow Muslims and was granted favors by MI5, including the release of suspected terrorists. Hamza told his aides he was “beyond the reach of British law,” according to authors Sean O’Neill Daniel McGrory (The Suicide Factory). An admission “that Abu Hamza and his followers were using [Britain] to raise funds to finance terrorism overseas did not seem to cause a blip on the MI5 agent’s radar,” O’Neill and McGrory write.

In 1999, Hamza would be implicated in the kidnapping and murder of Western tourists in Yemen. He would tell police he was following the Koran and would be released. The police returned to Hamza audio tapes “packed with the usual messages of intolerance and hatred, and culminating in exhortations to kill the enemies of Islam.”

His Finsbury Park mosque sermons were attended by alleged 9/11 hijackers Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer. Haroon Rashid Aswat, a top aide to Abu Hamza, would later be singled out as the mastermind of the London 7/7 bombings. Aswat is also suspected of working with British intelligence.

Another leading imam, Omar Bakri Mohammed, who collaborated with Osama bin Laden, also worked for British intelligence. “The British government knows who we are. MI5 has interrogated us many times. I think now we have something called public immunity,” Bakri admitted in 2001. Like many jihadists, the Syrian-born imam was connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, a documented British (and later CIA) intelligence asset.