The Pentagon on Friday was assessing the aftermath of a USA drone strike into Syria to determine whether it killed the Islamic State militant known as “Jihadi John,” the masked executioner shown on videos beheading several Western hostages.
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Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook says the airstrike Thursday in Raqqa targeted Mohamed Emwazi.
Cameron said although it was not yet certain whether the strike had been successful, targeting Mohammed Emwazi was “the right thing to do”. He said officials would be wary of announcing he’d been targeted only for him to appear “on video in a day’s time sticking his finger up at Obama and saying “I’m still alive”.
‘This will be a blow to ISIL’s propaganda machine, ‘ she said. “If they had arrested him and gone to court, it would have dragged on for months and months”.
Despite worldwide appeals and calls for mercy by his family the terror group released a video in October a year ago, of him kneeling in an orange jump-suit in the desert as he was beheaded by Jihadi John.
In each of the videos, the militant appeared dressed in a black robe with a black balaclava covering his face.
Initially dubbed “Jihadi John” by the media, he was subsequently named as Emwazi, from west London, in February. Experts and others later confirmed the identification.
Emwazi was born in Kuwait and spent part of his childhood in the poor Taima area of Jahra before moving to Britain while still a boy, according to news reports quoting Syrian activists who knew the family.
Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Manchester-based Ramadhan Foundation, said: “The killing of Mohammed Emwazi in Syria is a significant moment in the fight to get justice for David Haines, Alan Henning and all the victims of this evil man”.
An unnamed high-ranking expert told the BBC that there is a “high degree of certainty” that Emwazi was killed.
“You’re hearing it in your own language so the threat sounds all the more menacing”, said Raffaello Pantucci, the author of “We Love Death As You Love Life: Britain’s Suburban Terrorists” and the director of worldwide security studies at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute.
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Emwazi was suspected of carrying out dozens of executions for the so-called Islamic State, including the beheading of American journalist James Foley and other American hostages.
