How British elite forces killed ‘Jihadi John’ — report

A crack team of Special Air Forces commandos pinpointed and killed the infamous Islamic State executioner “Jihadi John,” ending a yearlong operation to find the high-value target responsible for the brutal murder of several Western hostages, a report by the British Daily Mail revealed Sunday.

In November US officials said drone strike had targeted members of a group of English-speaking Islamic State fighters known as “the Beatles” in Syria, killing at least one British man. It was not immediately clear if Mohammed Emwazi, the masked Islamic State jihadist known as Jihadi John, had been killed in the strike but security sources later said, “We are 99 percent sure we got him.”

While it was previously thought the operation was carried out solely by unmanned drones, operated up to hundreds of miles away at military bases in the region, Sunday’s report revealed a complex plan involving British Special Forces troops on the ground, deep inside IS territory.

According to the report, on the night of November 11, two US Chinook helicopters flew British SAS troops across the Syrian desert to an isolated location approximately 35 kilometers north of the IS-controlled city of Raqqa. From there, a team of eight SAS troops drove two desert buggies towards Raqqa, digging in about a kilometer from the city, the report said.

Once in location, the team dispatched three nano-helicopters with infrared and night-vision cameras in their noses that had been pre-programmed to fly to a hideout in a six-story building in Raqqa. Taking positions in the “hover and stare” mode, the drones recorded the movements of IS suspects, beaming footage by satellite back to SAS headquarters in Hereford and the US Central Command in Qatar.

As soon as footage of Emwazi was received, the airstrike was ordered.

“US commanders re-tasked a Reaper drone armed with Hellfire missiles. At 11.40 a car pulled up and he got inside” a source told the Daily Mail. “The Reaper locked on to its target and Jihadi John was history. The guys were chuffed to get that maniac.”

While Emwazi has been a high-value target for Western security agencies, he had successfully evaded coalition airstrikes by constantly changing his location with his security detail, making it incredibly difficult to pinpoint him.

Emwazi was featured in videos showing the killings of journalists Steven Sotloff — who held Israeli citizenship — and James Foley, US aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, and a number of other hostages.

The Islamic State later produced a series of videos featuring Emwazi beheading Sotloff and a number of other Westerners, while threatening world leaders from behind a black mask — in perfect English and with an unmistakable London accent.

The former London resident emigrated to the UK from his native Kuwait when he was 6, and first gained infamy after he beheaded Foley in August 2014.

Emwazi was identified as Jihadi John last February, although a lawyer who once represented Emwazi’s father told reporters that there was no evidence supporting the accusation. Experts and others later confirmed the identification.

Officials said Britain’s intelligence community had Emwazi on its list of potential terror suspects for years but was unable to prevent him from traveling to Syria. He had been known to the nation’s intelligence services since at least 2009, when he was connected with investigations into terrorism in Somalia.

Prior to joining the extremist group, Emwazi was considered a model student at the University of Westminster, where he studied information systems and business management from 2006 to 2009. Records indicate that he was two modules short of obtaining his degree.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.