Agencies
London

Prime Minister David Cameron yesterday vowed to use all means at his disposal to hunt down militants such as “Jihadi John” after the killer was unmasked as a Kuwaiti-born computer programming graduate from London.
The black-clad militant brandishing a knife and speaking with an English accent was shown in videos released by Islamic State (IS) apparently decapitating hostages including Americans, Britons and Syrians.
“When there are people anywhere in the world who commit appalling and heinous crimes against British citizens, we will do everything we can with the police, with the security services, with all that we have at our disposal to find these people and put them out of action,” Cameron said.
Cameron refused to go into the unmasking of “Jihadi John” as 26-year-old British militant Mohamed Emwazi, but said that people should get behind the security services, which he praised as impressive and dedicated to defending Britain.
Earlier London’s police chief defended MI5’s handling of the case.
His comments came after campaigners accused the security services of driving Mohamed Emwazi, 26, into becoming a bloodthirsty extremist by allegedly harassing him after he refused to become an informant.
But Stephen Greenhalgh, London’s deputy mayor for policing, told the Standard: “The security services and the police have to do all they can to protect the public and they always work together in partnership. You can’t plea bargain with evil.”
MI5, though, was facing mounting questions yesterday over why it failed to keep track of a “known wolf” who managed to slip out of Britain and travel to Syria to join Islamic State.
Emwazi was known to MI5 for several years. He was deported from Tanzania in 2009 amid fears he was travelling to join the terror group Al Shebaab, and MI5 tried unsuccessfully to recruit him as an informer.
The extremist, who was brought up in west London, was subject to a no fly order and was on a terror watch list but still managed to leave without detection.
He was a “person of interest” to MI5 as a member of a cell known as The London Boys, which was set up in 2007 to recruit and raise funds for Somalia-based terror group Al Shebaab.
The security services and police came into contact with Emwazi at least a dozen times during his time in London, it was claimed. MI5 will now face questions and an investigation by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee into their role in monitoring Emwazi.
Sir Menzies Campbell, a member of the committee, said the case appeared to have “echoes” of the 2013 murder of Lee Rigby, as killer Michael Adebolajo later turned out to be known to security agencies.
Jihadi John rose to notoriety in a video posted online last August, in which he appeared to kill the US journalist James Foley. Dressed all in black, he reappeared in videos of the beheadings of US journalist Steven Sotloff, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, and US aid worker Peter Kassig.
Last month, the terrorist appeared in a video with the Japanese hostages Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto, shortly before they were killed.
It has also been claimed he appeared in the horrific video released last month of a Jordanian pilot being burned alive. Relatives of his victims, including Sotloff and Haines, called for him to be brought to justice.
Asim Qureshi, a director at Cage, a prisoners’ rights group which lobbies against the US-led war on terror, provoked outrage and accusations of being an supporter for terror on Thursday when he described Emwazi as a “beautiful young man” who was “extremely gentle” and “humble.”
The US and UK intelligence agencies and the FBI are said to have identified Jihadi John as Emwazi last August and there is anger that his name has now been revealed.
The disclosure has caused shock on the north London estates where his family has lived since arriving in the UK from Kuwait in 1993. Emwazi was described as interested in football as a boy and was popular with classmates at St Mary Magdalene CE Primary in Maida Vale.