Jihadi John: The Making of a Terrorist by Robert Verkaik - review

How a young misfit became an IS monster. By Robert Fox
Face of evil: Mohammed Emwazi in one of IS’s notorious execution videos
Reuters
Robert Fox4 February 2016

Two years ago, in the heat of the Syrian summer, Mohammed Emwazi ordered some free computer software — and with a few taps of his laptop keyboard exposed his identity as the hooded executioner of the Islamic State known until then as Jihadi John. The video imagery of Emwazi’s gruesome murders of British, American and Japanese hostages had spearheaded the IS campaign of shock and terror across Syria, Iraq and cyberspace. Emwazi had revealed himself by using his code and number as a former student at the University of Westminster in order to download the new software for free.

In doing so he not only revealed the true identity of Jihadi John — thus lifting the mystique of demonic anonymity — but signed his own death warrant. The US and British intelligence services now knew their man and pretty much where he lived. Diligent “human intelligence” work revealed that Emwazi, a Kuwaiti raised in Maida Vale, had a wife and baby son living in a flat close to the media centre in the heart of the IS capital, Raqqa. As he was getting into a pick-up truck after visiting the flat, Emwazi and a companion were killed — vaporised according to a US spook — by a Hellfire missile launched from an American Reaper drone. The Reaper, backed by a British unmanned aerial vehicle, had been called onto the target from the ground, a piquant detail hitherto given no further elaboration — nor likely to be.

The exposing of Emwazi as Jihadi John hardly registered at first with Robert Verkaik, an experienced journalist on the terrorism beat for The Independent and then the Mail. It took some time for him to realise he had interviewed Emwazi in 2009 when the terrorist claimed to be one of a group of Muslims suffering unwarranted harassment by MI5. An email correspondence followed.

This is the point of departure for the new book, an outstanding pulling together of the fractured career of one of the most notorious terrorist psychopathic killers of this or any other age. The book is exceptional because its author makes no false claims for what he doesn’t know and never confuses explanation with explaining away, the besetting flaw of so many of the human rights lobby for violent Islamists.

Emwazi emerges as a misfit through his schooldays in St John’s Wood to studying computer science at Westminster University, where he first encountered radical Islamic preaching. Increasing travel restrictions after journeys to Tanzania and Kuwait led to a fixation about being persecuted by MI5, which may or may not have tried to recruit him.

In January 2013 he gave the authorities the slip to get to Syria, where he became the classic “victim-aggressor”, displaying genuine symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. The author, however, never quite manages to plumb the depths of Emwazi’s psychotic behaviour.

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1/18

Much of the context and human geography of IS is described lucidly and succinctly. Less satisfying is the analysis of what Britain’s security services and judges should or should not do to face down the Islamist terrorist challenge. Perhaps the most chilling detail in this excellent and thought-provoking book comes at the end. No sooner was Jihadi John named than the IS hierarchy dumped him, and found another nameless British psychopath to don the black hood and become its new lead video murderer.

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