But many of those who grew up with him have told the UK media that remember Emwazi altogether differently: as the typical “boy next door,” a popular kid who loved football, pop music and The Simpsons.
A day after the long-standing mystery behind Jihadi John’s identity was solved, clues to his past have begun to emerge — but far from showing him as a violent extremist, they paint a picture of an ordinary child and teenager growing up in the British capital.
Emwazi was born in Kuwait in 1988, and moved to the UK with his parents, Jasem and Ghaneya, and sister at the age of six, according to CAGE, an advocacy group for those affected by terrorism investigations.
The family settled down in west London; Emwazi’s father is reported to have worked as a taxi driver, while his mother stayed at home to look after Emwazi and his siblings.
–
Emwazi apparently did well enough at the school to go on to Westminster University in London; he completed a degree in 2009.
Asim Qureshi, research director of CAGE, insists that the Mohammed Emwazi he knew was “very kind, extremely gentle, [a] humble individual, who didn’t have any self-importance about himself.”
Intelligence services and terrorism experts are now piecing together just how he went from that to the infamous “bogeyman” of ISIS — something which continues to puzzle many of those who knew him as a boy.
