Murder In America - EP. 153: SYRIA - JIHADI JOHN: The ISIS Executioner Who BEHEADED Americans On Video

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

In today's episode of the show, we tackle the insane story of "Jihadi John", AKA Mohammed Emwazi, who terrorized the globe after his videotaped executions of hostages and threats towards foreign countries went viral on the internet. This is one of the darkest stories we've ever covered, and you're listening to "MURDERED AMERICANS", a mini-series here on "MURDER IN AMERICA". - Stay Connected: Join the Murder in America fam in our free Facebook Community for a behind-the-scenes look, more insights and current events in the true crime world: https://www.facebook.com/groups/4365229996855701 If you want even more Murder in America bonus content, including ad-free episodes, come join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/murderinamerica Instagram: http://instagram.com/murderinamerica/ Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/people/Murder-in-America-Podcast/100086268848682/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/MurderInAmerica TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theparanormalfiles and https://www.tiktok.com/@courtneybrowen Feeling spooky? Follow Colin as he travels state to state (and even country to country!) investigating claims of extreme paranormal activity and visiting famous haunted locations on The Paranormal Files Official Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheParanormalFilesOfficialChannel - (c) BLOOD IN THE SINK PRODUCTIONS 2024 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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365-day returns. Quince.com slash America. is not suitable for all audiences. We go into great detail with every case that we cover and do our best to bring viewers even deeper into the stories by utilizing disturbing audio and sound effects. Trigger warnings from the stories we cover may include violence, rape, murder, and offenses against children.

This podcast is not for everyone. You have been warned. Every day, around 3.7 million videos are uploaded to YouTube. Most of these videos are pretty innocuous. Some videos feature interviews, thumb show funny pranks. And yes, some videos show ghost hunting, like the documentaries that I post on my YouTube channel, The Paranormal Files.

You can upload just about anything to YouTube, and you're free to be as creative as possible with your work. However, on August 19, 2014, a video would be uploaded to YouTube that would forever change the history of the planet. The video titled, A Message to America, was incredibly disturbing. In the footage, a masked militant dressed in all black,

stood poised behind a man in an orange jumpsuit who sat on his knees. The man was clearly a hostage, and his face showed signs of visible distress. The video appeared to have been filmed in the middle of the desert, with the hot midday sun shining down directly upon the horrific acts that were about to unfold, illuminating them for all to see with disturbing clarity. The man in the orange jumpsuit was named James Wright Foley, and he was an American journalist and videographer from the Global Post who had been kidnapped on November 20,

22nd 2012, almost two years prior, while he was in northern Syria covering the Syrian Civil War. For two years, James's whereabouts had been unknown, and his family had been left wondering if they would ever see or hear from him again. That is, until about two years later, when, to their horror, they saw James's tired and beaten face in that video. Once again, in this video titled A Message to America, James sat dressed in orange with his arms tied behind his back and was shown to be on his knees next to a man armed with a knife, who sat ominously clad in all black in an undisclosed location in the desert. But it was what viewers saw when they pressed play that would be forever burned into their memories. In the video, James began speaking. But it was obvious that these weren't

his own words. The people in the video were forcing him to say these things. James, in his monologue, directly addressed the United States and condemned their actions in Iraq and then stated that the United States government was responsible for his death. He said, for what will happen to me is only a result of their complacency and criminality. I wish I had more time. I wish I could have the hope of freedom of seeing my family once again, but that ship has sailed. I guess all in all, I wish I wasn't American. Only moments after James finished speaking, the masked man, armed with a large knife by his side, identified himself as a member of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, otherwise known as ISIS. And they delivered a harrowing message.

This is James Wright Foley, an American citizen of your country. As a government, you have been at the forefront of the aggression towards the Islamic State. You have plotted against us and gone far out of your way to find reasons to interfere in our affairs. Today, your military air force is attacking us daily in Iraq. Your strikes have caused casualties amongst Muslims. You are no longer fighting an insurgency. We are an Islamic army. are an Islamic army and a state that has been accepted by a large number of Muslims worldwide.

So effectively, any aggression towards the Islamic state is an aggression towards Muslims from all walks of life who have accepted the Islamic caliphate as their leadership. So any attempt by you, Obama, to deny the Muslims their rights of living in safety under the Islamic caliphate will result in the bloodshed of your people. And then it happened. In front of the camera, the anonymous militant began to saw away at James's throat using the knife. And ultimately, James Foley was beheaded on camera in an act that would take less than 10 seconds. Now, while the video itself was cut to exclude the act of beheading, the editors didn't shy away from showing its brutal aftermath.

You see, when the video faded back in, James' head, which had just been speaking to the video's viewer moments ago, sat bloody, graying, and positioned atop the center of his chest. That's right, the man had cut off James' head and placed it on his chest for the world to see. But this unnamed killer wasn't done. After he had beheaded James and wanting to prove that his threats were serious, the killer proudly showed the camera the gruesome scene of the crime and demonstrated to the viewer that nearby, he was in possession of another American hostage. The other man, clad also in orange, was an American journalist for two.

Time magazine named Stephen Joel Soloff. And quickly, the masked man threatened to murder him just as he had done to James if President Barack Obama did not stop airstrikes against the Islamic state. It's impossible to overstate just how shocking and disturbing this video was. And not only to the citizens that viewed it, but to government officials as well. In fact, the graphic video shocked the entire world, and it brought ISIS to the forefront of the forefront of of international attention, the group's brutality and extremism would garner a widespread

global condemnation of ISIS, and it would shed light on the dangers that aid workers and journalists faced while working in conflict zones. The shocking videos and all of the others that ISIS created would also spark an international manhunt to track down the identity

of the masked executioner who had threatened the entire universe. United States. So this is the story of Jihadi John. I'm Courtney Browen. And I'm Colin Browen and you're listening to our new series Murdered Americans on Murder in America. Muhammad Amwazi was born on August 17, 1988 to Jaseem and Ganea Mwazi in the country of Kuwait. But even though the family had lived there for decades, the Amwazis still felt like outsiders in their home country. You see, in the 1950s, Muhammad's grandfather had been a well-respected tribal leader in Kuwait, but ultimately refused to accept the Kuwaiti passport during the recording

of Kuwait's first census. Then in 1961, Kuwait declared its independence from the United Kingdom, but without having a government-issued passport, which Muhammad's grandfather had refused to accept, the Mwazi family were not officially regarded as citizens and were therefore labeled badoons, which translates to without, in Arabic. According to the book titled Jihadi John by author Robert Vrkaic, Muhammad's grandfather believed that, even though he refused to obtain a passport, there was no way that he would ever be considered an outsider. Author Varkaiak wrote, he was, according to a family friend, a proud man who felt confident in his position in tribal society and regarded a passport as little more than a state handout. But his pride, and more

importantly, his decision to reject Kuwaiti nationality would have damaging repercussions for the Amwazis for many generations. But in the face of adversity, life for the Amwazi family carried on. Muhammad's father, Jaseem, was able to find a job as a policeman in the 1980s despite his statelessness and ended up working in a town called Tiamah, a relatively well-known area outside of Kuwait City where other badoons lived. Jasim was proud of his career and was able to live a more privileged life than other baduns during this time. But this would all change in the year 1986. In that year, the Bedoons were stripped of their civil rights by the Kuwait authorities, and their status was ultimately changed to illegal residents, despite them having no other connections to any countries

outside of Kuwait. Because of this status change, many Bedoon residents of Kuwait lost their jobs, their careers, their income, and were unable to receive housing, education, and health care. In the late 1980s, the Kuwaiti government issued the Alien Resistance Act. and almost immediately, thousands of Bedouins and their entire families were expelled from the country. In 1988, an appeal was brought forward that stated Bedouins held no other nationality, so they could not be labeled as aliens. However, the Kuwaiti government ignored the ruling and continued to deport Bedouins in mass numbers. Simply put, the authorities in Kuwaiti wanted nothing to do with the Bedouin people.

In fact, they wanted to get rid of them at all cost. Jossam, now married to an immigrant from Yemen, named Ghaniea, found their situation as Bedouins living in Kuwaiti to be dire. Gineya was pregnant with their first child, and Jossum was suddenly faced with the possibility of losing his job as a police officer, and there was nothing he could do about it, and things would only get worse for the Amwasi family. in 1990 during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwaiti, an event that would become known as the Gulf War. During that conflict, badoons were forced to fight for the Kuwaiti army,

but the ones who had escaped or had been deported were forced to fight on the Iraqi side. This pitted family members against family members, enforced generation of badoons who found themselves on separate sides of the border to fight against each other. This in turn only created more tension for the Kuwaiti Badoons, as they were labeled and stigmatized as collaborators for the Iraqi army,

even though they had no true association. In February of 1991, the Iraqi occupation ended, but the punishment for the Badoons intensified. Thousands were tried in court for collaboration, and others who had escaped during the war were not allowed to come back. the Mwazi family was lucky enough not to be deported. But even though they were allowed to stay in Kuwaiti, they were discriminated against, and they lived in constant fear that they too could be forced at any moment to leave their country. It was reported that by the early 90s,

the population of Bedouins and Kuwaiti had dropped from 250,000 to 100,000. Faced with the possibility of deportation, the Amwazi family said, their sights on a new life in the West. In 1993, when Muhammad was six years old, Jaseem and Ganea brought their asylum case to the immigration office in London. Pleading their case, Jaseem and Ganea stated that their home country of Kuwait refused to give them citizenship and that they had no place to truly call home. But in doing their due diligence, before letting the family into the United Kingdom, they wanted to make sure that the Imwazi family had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein and his Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. For three years, Britain,

's legal system fact-checked the Amwazi family history and traced their story, searching through every detail of their life's story with a fine-tooth comb. Even Muhammad's younger brother, Omar, would later say that his parents were always nothing but loyal Kuwaiti citizens, who had never one time agreed with Saddam Hussein or his ideology. He stated, quote, When the papers tried to say that he, my father, was pro-Saddam Hussein, my mom found that certificate presented to my father by the Kuwaiti police force to show me what nonsense it was." But eventually the family's story checked out, and British immigration granted

the family asylum in 1996. After finally finding a home country, the Amwazis moved to an affluent London suburb called Midavail, where other family members had found refuge in the past. However, the Amwazi family was not wealthy by any means, and Jassim was forced to take odd jobs working as a cab and delivery driver, while Ganea stayed at home with the couple's five children. Inside their house, the family spoke Arabic. And outside of the home, the family attended religious services at the local mosque. Ganea preferred to wear traditional Islamic clothing, including a hijab when she left the home. But friends and neighbors would later say that the Amazis weren't strict radical Muslims. One friend stated, they were just normal Muslims. I don't think Muhammad

was particularly religious, and I don't think the family forced them to be religious. Muhammad Amwazi, in his youth, would go on to attend the St. Mary Magdalene Church of England Primary School, where he was labeled as a quiet and polite student. While in school, Muhammad appeared to be nothing but a normal kid, and he constantly talked of his big dreams to one day become a famous footballer for his favorite team, Manchester United. He even stated that his one ambition in life was to be, quote, in a football team and scoring a goal, end quote, at the time he was 30 years old. In his school yearbook, Muhammad listed his favorite book as How to Kill a Monster from the Goosepump series by R.L. L. Stein. He also

listed his favorite computer game as Duke Nukem, Time to Kill. Other interests included the Pop Group S Club 7, the TV show The Simpsons, monkeys, the color blue, French fries, and of course football. One of his classmates stated, he played football every lunchtime and at the after-school football club. Through football, he learned different words and expressions. Like all the guys, he always wanted to be the striker. He wasn't so good in school. He was the bottom half of the class, but he was one of the sporty guys. He was popular. Muhammad's family later reported that he was a normal kid trying to fit in with the other crowd of students. He was shy, hardworking, and fond of the latest trends in clothing and fashion.

Later on in life, after Muhammad would eventually be unmasked as jihadi Jihadi John, the ruthless ISIS killer, documentarians would retrieve archival footage from a vintage BBC report on the St. Mary Magdalene Church of England Primary School that had actually captured footage of Muhammad while he was a student there. And the videos taken at the school showed some somewhat odd behavior. One of the videos showed Muhammad and his classmates playing football, and while he was actively participating in the game, he didn't appear to communicate at all with the other boys.

At one point, the camera focused on Muhammad after one of his classmates shouted his name, and it was obvious he tried to cover his face. One of his teachers named Claudia Garuso admitted that Muhammad had a hard time making eye contact with her and appeared to be a follower instead of a leader during an interview for the HBO documentary on masking Jihadi John, anatomy of a terrorist. One of Mohammed's classmates later came forward and said that he started covering the lower half of his face after a girl told her friends that he had bad breath. It became an insecurity of his.

And other students would tease him about it to push his buttons. But Muhammad never acted out. In fact, teachers described him as non-confrontational and passive, basically the ideal student. After finishing primary school, Mohammed left St. Mary's Magdalene Church of England and began attending Quentin Kinniston Community Academy in North London for secondary school. And it was here where he continued to pursue his passion for football

and he even made some new friends along the way. One friend would later say, quote, We became very close. I used to walk to and from school with him. And later we would play football. together at Paddington Rec before going to a cafe every Saturday morning. We were both a couple of jokesters, and he was a normal lad." End quote. Now at this point in Muhammad's adolescence, the Amwazis had moved to a larger flat in West London after his mother, Gagne gave birth to a daughter

in 2002. Muhammad continued to attend school and play football with his friends. He also developed an interest and rap music, especially the music of Jay-Z. And he always gravitated to his school's computer lab, where his instructor Claudia said he would spend hours in front of the screen. Mohamed was also known to dress in the latest trends. He was also considered to be a semi-popular athlete. But his inability to maintain eye contact with the opposite sex and his scrawny build made him an easy target for bullies.

his head teacher at the Quentin Canistan Community Academy named Joe Shudder said, quote, he had some issues with being bullied, which we dealt with, but it was not seen as a huge concern. End quote. One of his friends also admitted that older teenagers targeted Mohammed, and they would wait outside of the school building to steal his lunch money. Muhammad, throughout the years of bullying, for the most part,

remained non-confrontational. But there were instances where he stood up for himself and got into an occasional fight. During year 9, one of his closest friends were called an incident in class when they were studying Nazi genocide, and he heard Muhammad mutter under his breath. Good, they deserved it. The friend believed that he was joking, and when he asked him about it, Muhammad made it clear that he hated Jews and anyone who was a Jew, he called them, quote, fucking pigs, end quote.

He also hated President George Bush and made his opinions clear after the United States invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. One friend stated, he fucking hated George Bush and wanted to kill him in revenge for the killing of innocent civilians. He said the same about Tony Blair. It was strange because although he was Muslim, as far as I know, he never went to a mosque and he never seemed religious. I felt that because he was so young and his views so strong, he must have picked them up from somewhere outside school. As the years progressed and Muhammad got older, his attitude at school seemed to change. He started dressing like a gangster rapper and listening to Tupac, Eminem, and Snoop Dogg.

He also became more aggressive and refused to be pushed around by other classmates. He also picked up the habit of smoking weed and cigarettes with his gang of friends, skipping school, and it was around this time when he started drinking alcohol. A girl from school later recalled, he would enjoy sitting in the corner smoking weed. It didn't bother him that it was illegal or against his faith. We would roll joints and smoke them together. We also smoked the drug behind the school playground.

Afterwards, everyone, including Muhammad, would go back into class and act like nothing had happened. He was not a good Muslim. End quote. By all accounts, Mohammed appeared to be a normal teenager who was attempting to find his own path in the world. However, as he got older, he started associating with gang members,

frequenting London's club scene, and he was influenced by older men who he appeared to look up to. In the documentary Unmasking Jihadi John, anatomy of a terrorist, They said that Mohammed's new group of friends were involved in crime and at one point Mohammed was arrested for stealing bikes. However, he was later acquitted of all charges.

He would end up graduating from high school in 2006 and went on to attend college at the University of Westminster in London where he studied information systems and business management. During this time, the University of Westminster was known as, quote, a left-wing establishment which attracted militant students, end quote. At the time, there was a large Islamic society on campus that hosted a number of radical speakers,

including a man by the name of Anwar al-Aulaki, a known al-Qaeda leader that was eventually killed by a U.S. drone attack in 2011. But in April of 2006, only a few months before Mohawk, began his college studies. Anwar al-Aulaki arrived at the campus and gave a speech to the Islamic society. It was known even at the time that Aulaki supported radical Islamic ideology, and he was outspoken towards his views of violence against the West.

I, for one, was born in the U.S. I lived in the U.S. for 21 years. America was my home. I was a preacher of Islam. preacher of Islam involved in non-violent Islamic activism. However, with the American invasion of Iraq and continued U.S. aggression against Muslims, I could not reconcile between living in the U.S. and being a Muslim, and I eventually came to the conclusion that jihad against America is binding upon myself, just as it is binding on every other able Muslim.

After Al-Laki's speech on campus, the Islamic Society would begin a five-year period on which members of the group focused their attention on Islamist extremism and supported a new emerging radical group called al-Shabaab, a group that Muhammad would also later be associated with. Muhammad's former English teacher Claudia Garuso said, He was part of a very supportive, inclusive school environment, and going on to university, a lot of those kinds of support structures are withdrawn. And I think that for any vulnerable young person being a part of a very big faceless university community is where some of those issues would have set in. During his three years at the university, Muhammad developed a new identity for himself and was said to have been influenced by two men.

Muhammad's soccer and Balal Berjawi. Soccer and Muhammad had grown up close to each other in London, and soccer's younger brother, Mahab, had been in the same grade and same school as Muhammad. Socker was three years older than Muhammad, and by the year 2006, he had already been identified as an Islamic extremist and had been placed under watch by the British Security Service, known as MI5, or Military Intelligence, Section 5. In 2007, Muhammad Socker was detained at the airport and questioned by immigration officials for three hours after returning from a trip to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Dubai. According to author Robert Verkaic, Sokker's mother recalled her. on telling officials, I didn't plan to visit all these countries, it's just how my summer happened. However, MI5 had received information that linked soccer to a group of hardcore Islamic extremists in London that were in communication with foreign jihadists, and so his recent

travels throughout the Middle East were being considered as very suspicious. It's July 7, 2005 in London, England. The weather that morning was particularly unnoteworthy, or rather benign, and the day seemed nothing but average. Birds were chirping. The city was alive with the sounds of milling crowds, car horns, and pedestrian chatter, and children were headed to their schools. It really was a perfect morning. Also, to put you into the scene, it's around 8.50 a.m. that day.

People that morning had fairly recently awoken, had gotten their day started with a tea or coffee, and were presently headed to their jobs to clock in. The public transport systems in London are famous, one could say. They include those cheeky red double-decker buses in the London Underground. An underground rail service known across the world, it's used by sometimes as many as 5 million people per day. That morning, millions of people had boarded these transport vehicles,

either excited to get to work, or the opposite, dreading their final destination. But on that day, four men boarded these aforementioned public transport systems, carrying backpacks. It seemed like these men were also in a rush to get to work. But to on-lurkers, something seemed off. The men looked nervous, anxious, desperate, and shortly after they would board the trains and bus that they chose, the world would understand their mission.

On July 7, 2005, a series of suicide attacks were carried out on London's public transportation, all by Islamic terrorists. These attacks would be infamously known as the 7-7 bombings. On that day, July 7, 2005, a group of four radicalized individuals targeted public transportation services, like the London Underground, and the famous red double-decker buses. These individuals detonated bombs after boarding transportation vehicles during the morning rush hour. In total, 56 people, including the four bombers, were killed, in a total of 700. 1884 individuals were injured. This event sent shockwaves around the planet.

And immediately, the British government dug into the dirt and began calculating their response. MI5, which is the British Intelligence Agency, quickly received word that the bombings had been carried out by British Islamic extremists, who had been radicalized by Muslims returning to London from training camps, and Samarming. The information that MI5 received also mentioned Mohamed Sukkur, which was Mohammed Mwazi's friend. So to get back on the Jihadi John story, when Mohamed Sukkur returned from his travels from the Middle East after the 7-7 attacks, British intelligence services wanted to have a word with him. And from that point forward, security services began to frequently question Muhammad, and also began to to regularly visit him at his home in St. John's Wood.

Now, one of Muhammad's closest friends, who was also at the time being watched by MI5, was a man named Bilau al-Berjawi. MI5 believed that Secure and Brajawi were the heart and soul behind the group of British Islamic extremists. Brajawi himself had grown up in London, and he was attracted to the same gang culture that Mohammed, Mwazi had eventually gotten himself associated with. As with Mohammed, Bajawi did not appear to be overly religious during his teenage years. However, at 19, he married a Somali woman and started to take more of an interest in his

Islamic faith. In 2006, court documents reported that Bajawi left London with four other men to attend a training camp in Somalia, led by none other than Al Qaeda. The camp was run by a man named Fazul Mohammed, and he instructed the trainees to return to London, quote, to carry out facilitation activities and to recruit individuals to work on behalf of Al Qaeda, end quote. By 2007, only one year after entering college, Mohamed Mwazi had established a close connection to both, both secure and Bajawi, two known Islamic extremists with previous links to domestic terror attacks. The two men intrigued Muhammad with their jihad lifestyle, which Muhammad eventually saw as a replacement

for the gang culture he had been drawn to during his teenage years. He had finally found another group that accepted him, a group that needed him. And apparently, the jihad culture not only excited him, but it made him feel like his life had meaning. According to Cage director Asim Koreshi, Mwazi certainly looked up to Berjawi. I really see Amwazi as the younger guy trying to get into the group. He doesn't have a long history of practicing his religion.

He is very much a street lad, and he kind of looks up to these guys in many ways. According to MI5, Soccer and Berjawi recruited young men through covert meetings at football games and eventually persuaded the new recruits to ask for money at nearby mosques. In turn, the money earned would, be taken by Berjawi and sent to al-Shabaab in Somalia to purchase weapons. By early 2009, Muhammad Mwazi's personality and appearance had drastically changed. It was reported that he was now

praying five times a day and had begun memorizing parts of the Quran. He became solely focused on religion, and his university studies reflected this when he suddenly failed one of his classes. Nonetheless, in 2009, he graduated from the University of Westminster in London with a degree in computer science. In late May 2009, under the guise that he wanted to travel to Tanzania for a safari holiday, Muhammad left London with two friends, and they made their way from the Heathrow airport to Amsterdam. The trio had decided it would be smarter not to fly directly to Dara Salam, but as it turned out, the Tanzanian security services were already one step ahead of the group. As Muhammad and his two friends got off their plane, armed men greeted them at passport control, and they were immediately

detained at a detention center. Inside Muhammad's bag, they found an assortment of clothing for various types of weather, including a set of green combat jackets. Muhammad insisted that the jackets were for their safari. However, MI5 stated that the jackets would have been beneficial at the Al-Qaeda training camp run by al-Shabaab. The officer said, this jacket looks a bit military, Muhammad. And Muhammad stated, I started laughing and asked how he could even suggest that it was military, what he was trying to prove. I had another jumper, a stylish jumper, so I asked him, what about this jumper? Was he not going to make any comment about that? He fell silent then.

After being questioned, Muhammad and his friends were then held in separate holding cells for 24 hours without access to food or water. In the documentary Unmasking Jihadi John, anatomy of a terrorist, Muhammad described the incident in his own words, saying, quote, We were extremely tired and I was sleeping on the floor. We didn't even need sleep to be honest that day. Mosquitoes flying all over the place. On the way now, back to the airplane, we were sitting down, and Emmanuel came up to us,

and he was just laughing and cracking jokes with us like nothing happened. And we said, Emmanuel, look, tell us the reason you know, why have we been rejected? And he told us, look, it's not the Tanzanian government, could be the British government. That's the reason why they haven't let you in. So we were in a major shock. End quote.

According to the author Robert Verkaic, Emmanuel then produced a piece of paper that said, quote, refuse entry and send back to the UK with the same flight. And so Mohammed and his two friends were put back on a plane bound for Amsterdam. Once they arrived, they were met by MI5 and Dutch security officers. Dutch intelligence officer Fernando, an MI5 officer Nick, took the trio aside and asked what their intentions had been in Tanzania.

Muhammad said, quote, they sat me down and said, we think you're a person that wants to go to Somalia to do some terrorist activities. And I told him, look, man, Tanzania's here, Somalia's way over there. You'd have to go past Kenya. and I told him, you probably got this messed up now, yeah?

During these interrogations, MI5 threatened to keep an eye on Muhammad, something he knew had already been happening with his two associates in London, soccer and Bilal. He said, Nick said that at the end of the day they had been following us and watching us closely. I told him that it was news to me and I had no idea about it. He knew everything about me, where I lived, what I did, the people I hanged around with. Eventually, MI5 agent Nick calmed down. and tried another approach. He told Muhammad,

listen, you've got the whole world in front of you. You're 21 years old, you just finished uni. Why don't you work for us? After Muhammad refused, Nick told him that due to his connections with extremists, his life wasn't going to be easy going forward. Ultimately, the men were released, as the security services had no real evidence linking them to terrorism that would allow them to keep them detained, and the men were put on a ferry bound for Dover, England. Good hair days do more than we give them credit for. When your hair Your hair feels healthy, you show up differently. You feel more confident, more relaxed, and you're not constantly checking the mirror.

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Their bags were searched and they were held in question for. two hours. However, this time the questioning focused on religious and political beliefs. They specifically asked him what his thoughts were about the July 7th, 2005 London attacks and 9-11. They asked him where he prayed and who he hung around. They also informed him that they had received information that he was bound for Somalia and was not actually going on a safari in Tanzania. What do you think of the war in Afghanistan? I said, what do I think, you know, we see the news innocent people are getting killed and he started telling me what do you think of nine and everything i told him this is a wrong thing what happened was wrong and i told him everything that's

been happening is extreming anything like bombs or whatever that mean happened or all from extremists and then and then so after all of this he came back and he looked at me and he said i still believe that you're going to somalia to train eventually though mohammed and his friends were released and from there they boarded a train back to London. Robert Verkake explained, quote, the interviews in Tanzania, Holland, and Dover, now showed Mwazi exactly how the British authorities viewed him. The angst in his voice on the tapes revealed that he believed judgment had been cast on his behavior

without allowing him to defend his actions or explain his views. He was being forced into a corner and he didn't like it. A few days after being forced to return to London, Muhammad learned that the MI5 officers had gone to his fiancé's residence to speak with her regarding the couple's relationship. Muhammad and the young Somali woman, who was two years his junior, had started dating after he graduated from college. And after a few months of dating,

Muhammad was smitten and asked her to marry him. The two were planning a wedding later that summer. However, those plans would change when she learned about her fianc's hidden connections to Islamic extremists. She eventually called off the wedding, and Mohamed was left angry, depressed, and alone. In a later audio recording, Mohamed said, quote, I was absolutely shocked. He interrogated her and her family about myself, asking personal questions. End quote.

Now, his fiancé had come from a traditional Muslim middle-class family, but they wanted nothing to do with the extreme Islamic views in the Middle East. Now, Muhammad begged his parents to intervene and save the relationship, but his fiance's family refused. And as far as they were concerned, the relationship was over. Feeling defeated and paranoid about the continuous attention from MI5 in Scotland Yard, Muhammad and his parents believed his best course of action was to leave the country. Muhammad's life had taken a drastic turn since returning to London.

He now had to watch his back at every turn as he was continuously followed by undercover agents and was being kept under heavy surveillance. In September of 2009, Muhammad packed his bags and took a flight out of Heathrow Airport bound for Kuwait City. He chose to live with his grandmother in her small apartment in the run-down town of Taima, the same area where Muhammad's father had once served as a policeman. One of his friends in Kuwait would later say, even though he could have stayed with his cousins who had comfortable beds,

he stayed with his grandmother, even though her living conditions is terrible. It was rough, bite marks and ants crawling all over your face. However, now facing the fact that he was starting a new life, Muhammad knew he would have to find a job to support himself. He eventually found one with the computer company named Al-Aul. His boss would later say that although he was quiet and withdrawn, he was a model employee.

He was the best employee we ever had. He was very good with people, and decent. He came to our door and gave us his CV. His boss said at the time, due to his fluency in both English and Arabic, Muhammad quickly developed the proper skills that he would use to persuade customers to purchase IT products offered by the company. Although Muhammad never socialized with his coworkers or attempted to make friends, he often spent his weekends in the desert with other people his own age. You see, the desert outside Kuwait City was full of recreational activities, including football, food tents, and friends gathering to talk about politics

or religion. One of his friends admitted, we used to go chill in the big tents where everyone just goes to relax. We sat around drinking lots of tea, eating good food and talking about world politics. In these sessions everyone talks about something. But because Muhammad wasn't as old as the rest of us, he didn't really say

very much. Eventually, things shifted in his life when he met another young woman through one of his Kuwaiti family members. For the first time in months, Muhammad felt like his heart had been mended, and by late 2009, he had once again set his sights on marriage. However, before the wedding, Muhammad wanted to take care of an issue that had been bothering

him for weeks. A toothache. You see, for weeks now, he had been frantically searching Kuwait for a reputable dentist, but unfortunately, he had no luck. So, at the end of 2009, he decided to return to London to have his teeth checked. He phoned his father in London and told him he was coming home for one week to fix his problem. His brother Omar later reported, the last time he came back was for his teeth because the Kuwaiti dentist couldn't do anything for him.

He said, you have to go back to Britain. So he called up my dad and said, I'm coming back for only a week. I'm going to get my teeth checked because they are killing me. I'm going to get a filling and going back. That was the last time he came back. He got that done. I always laughed about his tooth because he couldn't sleep at all at night.

So after getting his tooth fixed, Muhammad eventually returned to Kuwait. But as he boarded the plane, in front of a crowd of people, immigration officers confiscated his cell phone and he was questioned about what he'd be doing in his destination country. Afterwards, Muhammad asked why he had been taken his side for questioning and was told

it had been a routine passport check, nothing more, nothing less. Muhammad then returned to Kuwait in early 2010. However, it wouldn't be his last trip back to London. In May 2010, he returned under the guys that he wanted to file the paperwork to permanently live in Kuwait. One of his friends also admitted that Muhammad's teeth were still bothering him, so he decided to take one last visit to the dentist. His friend stated,

His father called him and asked if he could come. I said I didn't think it was a good idea as he was lucky he didn't get blocked from returning to Kuwait. I said to Muhammad, look, after all the trouble you've had in the UK, why take the risk? But he just said he had to help his dad sort a few things out and he would be back. However, after spending three weeks in London on June 2, 2010, Mohammed once again booked a flight out of Heathrow Airport bound for Kuwait and was stopped again by immigration officers. According to author Robert Verkaic, Muhammad was detained by police officers who told him his luggage needed to be searched,

and his laptop, cell phone, and SIM cards were confiscated. He was then taken to an interview room where he was recorded and repeatedly asked about his trip to Tanzania, which he had taken years ago. That trip was a ghost that haunted Muhammad every single day, it seemed. It appeared that the line of questioning about the so-called graduation safari trip just wasn't going to be dropped, ever. Eventually, a counterterrorism officer entered the room and, began to question him. Muhammad would later say that the officer, an Asian man,

became agitated when his cell phone rang and he pushed him up against the wall violently. He compared the interrogation to being locked up with caged animals, that's a direct quote. By now, Muhammad's flight to Kuwait had already left and he knew he'd have to book another flight the next day. So at 1 a.m., his father arrived back at Heathrow Airport to collect him and they returned home.

The next morning on June 3, 2010, Mohammed rebooked his flight and arrived back at Terminal 3 to return to Kuwait. But once again, as Mohammed attempted to check in, he was flacked and a member of the airline delivered the news that he would not be leaving London. The representative stated, quote, Mr. Mohammed, there's no point in you going on your trip, as we have just had a call from the Kuwaitis saying that they do not want you because you have been deported before and so they won't go.

give you a visa." End quote. Muhammad attempted to argue that his home was in Kuwait and that he had a fiancé waiting for him. But the representative explained the situation was out of their hands and they would have to involve immigration services if he did not comply. And not wanting to relive the brutality of the night before, Muhammad then gathered his belongings and returned to his parents' home in London.

But he was now at a crossroads. London didn't want him, and now Kuwait didn't want him either. And to make matters worse, MI5 had made sure to contact his fiancé's family in Kuwait to inform them that Muhammad was being investigated for terrorist activities. Then, like we mentioned, once the family learned about his potential extremism, the wedding was called off, and they wanted no further contact with him. According to Muhammad's brother Omar, quote, The Kuwaiti family members of the girls were friends of ours,

and they said so-and-so approached us with this and that. They were thinking, if this is happening before marriage, what's going to happen during the marriage? So they canceled. End quote. So in addition to losing his fiancé, he also immediately lost his job at Al-Alial. In the days following his interrogation and rejected return to Kuwait,

Muhammad contacted a group called Cage. Cage, or the campaign against criminalizing communities, is an organization that advocates for individuals who feel they've been wrongly targeted or mistreated by counterterrorism efforts. In mid-2010, he wrote an email that stated, I really don't know what to do. But inshallah, God willing, I'm not going to lose hope. I've spoken to some family in Kuwait,

and they said that they're trying their best to move the refusal of my name. name that is stored in the system. But I can't really depend on that. He also reported the constant interrogation and surveillance by British security services and stated that he believed he had been wrongly targeted. In an effort to help him, Cage instructed Muhammad to take his story public. At first, Muhammad refused to make his story public and advised the Cage director, Asim Qureshi, that he wanted to work behind the scenes to get his ban from Kuwait lifted. But in late September 2010, he still wasn't having any luck and then decided to go public. A scene told Muhammad about a journalist named Robert Verkaic who would take his story seriously

and would independently investigate the entirety of the situation. After a series of email exchanges, Robert and Muhammad met at a coffee shop in Midevail in December 2010. Robert Verkiak would obviously go on to publish a book titled Jihadi John, the making of a terrorist, and in his book he described the first time that he met Muhammad. He said, Although he hadn't given me a description, I had no trouble recognizing him. When he walked into the shop, he had a beard and walked with a barely concealed swagger, which belied his modest demeanor.

I think I offered him a handshake, which he duly accepted, and then I offered him a drink, which he also accepted, but then insisted on paying for. He talked carefully and politely, often using my name to emphasize his point. During their meeting, Muhammad explained that MI5 and British security services had destroyed his life. He spoke about his last interrogation with the Asian counterterrorism officer, who had thrown his Quran on the floor. and then about how he had been attacked when his cell phone rang. However, he appeared to be the most annoyed

with the fact that MI5 was constantly harassing his family and making anonymous phone calls to his parents' home. He spoke about his two fiancés and how the government had interfered enough to make him lose both relationships. He told Robert, They caused me to lose two girlfriends. I was engaged to both of them,

but because they went to talk to the girls' families, they broke off with me. Robert promised to investigate Muhammad's claims and instructed him that if he went forward, he would have to print pictures of him and his two fiancés and ask questions about how MI5 had disrupted their lives. As far as Robert was concerned after his initial meeting with Muhammad, it was apparent that he wanted to be portrayed as a victim. In the days following the interview, Robert and Muhammad continued to exchange emails.

Muhammad sent copies of his reports he had made against the British police, and in an email dated December 14, 2010, he detailed how badly his life had been affected by MI5. He wrote, Hi Robert, I have just received two letters in the post regarding my police complaint. I've attached those as you requested. Please let me know when you want me to come down for a photo, etc. Also, something I would like to share. Recently I sold my laptop via Gumtree.

When I sell anything via internet, I always write my surname in the ad, which is MWazi. I received a call of someone that was interested in my laptop. I went to meet that person next to the nearest station to my house, might avail, so that he could have a look at the laptop, and if it satisfied him, then he would buy it. That person, to my surprise, didn't even bother looking to see if the laptop works or not. When you buy something from someone you've never seen before, you most likely would test the product. Anyway, in a matter of seconds, I gave him the laptop, thinking that he's going to test the laptop. And he gave me the money straight away.

We shake hands, and he said, nice doing business with you, Muhammad. I never told this person my first name, and I never give out my first name. It was impossible for him to know my first name. I felt shocked and paused for a few seconds as he walked away. I knew it was them. Sometimes I feel like I'm a dead man walking, not fearing they may kill me. Rather, fearing that one day I'll take as many pills as I can so that I can sleep forever. I just want to get away from these people.

Mohamed continued to stay at his parents' flat in London, and he spent most of his free time playing video and computer games. His brother Omar said that at the time, he hardly ever left the house because he feared MI5 in British security services, and what they were capable of. He also couldn't find a job because no one would hire him, so he quickly ran out of money, and the things in his life started to look bleak.

Omar said, quote, let's say there was something across the road he had to get, and there was a very busy road. He wouldn't think about getting hit. He would just have to get across that road and get what he had to get, because he had no life anymore. He was rejected from his work, from his marriage and from his community,

even from traveling as well. That hurt him a lot, not being able to go back to his homeland. On December 25, 2010, Mohamed wrote Cage an email that stated his father was in Kuwait and found out that his name was not found on a list of people that were not allowed to return to the country. He also wrote Robert an email that said that Scotland Yard had

finished their investigation into his report about the counterterrorism officer and that the officer had been reprimanded for his actions. However, he was not fired and was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing. So Muhammad believed that he should take the complaint to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. He also advised Robert to run his story as soon as possible. But Robert told Muhammad that the story would have to wait until the IPCC had their decision and that he still needed photographs of his two fiancés. Muhammad responded that he had been in contact with the women, but neither of them wanted their photos published.

On January 11, 2011, Robert emailed Muhammad and told him that he was no longer working with the Independent and had moved to a new position at Mail on Sunday. He wrote, sorry to not get to you sooner. I'm in a state of flux at the moment as I am leaving the Independent to join the Mail on Sunday as the Law and Security Editor. Would it be okay if I took your story to the new paper and tried to get published there instead? According to Robert's novel, Muhammad then once again contacted Cage and learned that Mail on Sunday was not Muslim friendly, and then reached out to Robert and told him that if he went forward with the story,

he wanted him to make sure he had complete control over the editorial process. On January 25, 2011, Muhammad emailed Robert for the last time in Rome. I wrote, Hi Robert, no problem. I knew you probably was busy because of your move. I don't know what it is that you want me to forward to you at your new email, but I'm guessing it's the previous attachments. Thanks again, Muhammad. Throughout the month of January 2011, Muhammad continued to contact Cage director Asim Qureshi. On January 13th, he told Assim that his father returned from Kuwait and could not provide additional details on why he had been banned from reentering the country. However, he wasn't going to give up trying.

In March 2011, he emailed Cage again and said, My mother will shortly go to Kuwait to visit her family. I was thinking of going with her. You think it's worth a try as they will see me traveling with my mother? If that makes a difference to them, my mother is only worried that when I land in the Kuwait airport, if I am even allowed to get on the plane, that they, the Kuwaiti officials,

will take my fingerprints photos and then they will never let me in. Any advice you can pass on to me and my worried mother? Cage attorney, Suggier Hussein, responded to Muhammad and told him, I'm afraid no one can give you a definitive answer on this, but it may be worth trying it out, inshallah. But Muhammad at this point was sick of texts, email, and phone calls, and wanted to act. So, on April 5, 2011, Muhammad set up an in-person meeting with Cage director, Assim Koreshi. And after the meeting, Muhammad cut off all communication with Cage.

It's unknown exactly what words were exchanged during this meeting, but judging by Muhammad's response, they must have been pretty potent. But in the summer of 2011, Muhammad would catch a big break. when he managed to escape London and the constant surveillance of MI5. That summer, he and a friend took a car to the Euro Tunnel, which leads from Folkestone to Calais, France. It's important to note that in 2012, when British security services stopped Muslims at the airports in London for flights bound for Syria, the Euro Tunnel became a popular way for Islamic extremists to exit the country. It was reported that when Muhammad made his final escape in 2013, that this was the route that he took.

Nonetheless, he and his friend, a suspected jihadist who had been captured in Afghanistan, then made their way from Kalei into Portugal. When they were there, the two men visited a Syrian national who had fled the country and was taking refuge in Portugal. But Portugal wasn't exactly the safe haven that it had cracked up to be. You see, due to his ties to Islamic extremist activities, Portugal's security services were actively watching the Syrian national. So when Muhammad and his friend arrived, officers were once again interested in their trip.

The Syrian refugee explained that Muhammad and the other man were just friends who wanted to visit, and he arranged a meeting for the trio to meet and speak to the Portuguese security officers. Of course, Muhammad was not enthusiastic about meeting with the officers due to his constant scrutiny from MI5, but in order to help his friend's situation, he agreed to sit down and answer some questions. During the meeting, Muhammad decided to let his friend do all the talking. His friend explained that the two were in the country on a road trip and wanted to go sightseeing. It was a completely innocent journey. According to Robert Rake, the Portuguese security officers were content with the trio story,

and from there allowed the men to go on their way. In 2013, it was reported that when Muhammad fled to Syria, he hooked up with a group of jihadists from Portugal. It's unknown why Muhammad did not travel to Syria when he had the chance to in 2011. However, it can be speculated that it was because his father had called him and told him that an important family issue had come up. Nonetheless, after their Odyssey of Freedom, Muhammad and his friend eventually returned back to London.

In early 2012, he once again contacted Cage. On January 8th, he wrote, Smile, it's me again. Sorry for the headaches that I cause Aki. Would you be at your office during the week? I would like to see you, Inshallah, recording some advice that it shouldn't be too long. Any time is okay with me, inshalla.

Robert Verkajek explained that the email showed how Muhammad had now changed from a non-religious teenager to a dedicated Islamist. But as the months progressed, Muhammad would strike out time and time again in his search for employment, and he had no luck finding a job with his computer science degree anywhere in London, so at this point, he decided to pursue a new avenue. During the summer, he filled out an application to become a foreign language teacher in the Middle East and started a course in Seltah, or certificate in teaching English to speakers of other languages.

His teachers were impressed with his skill and dedication, as he was fluent in both English and Arabic. However, AMI-5 wasn't going to let him head off to the Middle East so easily. You see, eventually, Muhammad and two friends from his class were granted interviews for open language teaching positions in Saudi Arabia. While both of his friends received jobs, Muhammad's application was rejected. His younger brother Omar said, first the person who interviewed him said he did have the job, and on the second interview they rejected him.

So they gave him the job at first, and then they rejected him. Muhammad's family believed that his constant surveillance by MI5 is what ultimately led him to lose his job. When he learned that he had been rejected, he challenged the decision and asked the recruiter what had changed. Omar, who admitted he had been in the room while Mohammed was on the Skype call, said that the woman on the screen appeared nervous when asked about the rejection. According to him, the woman mentioned something about his beard, and he replied, What about my beard? Does it have a price tag on? Is it unique? Is it different in any way to the other's beards? Because both of my friends who got the job both have a beard.

But he couldn't get a straight answer. And once again, he was kicked back onto the streets in search of another employer. Omar said that throughout the summer of 2012, Mohammed remained determined to get back to Kuwait, but he believed at the time that it was because Muhammad wanted to spend time with his grandma, who was getting older. Omar also stated that he believed Muhammad wanted to go back to Kuwait, because there he wouldn't be judged for practicing his religion. But while Muhammad continued to play the role of a victim, MI5 increased their surveillance on him,

and after acquiring some new information, they were now under the impression that Muhammad was a part of a net, of Islamic extremists who supported terrorist efforts in both Somalia and the United Kingdom. His two mentors, Balal and Soccer, had been traced to Somalia with al-Shabaab's army, and the two were believed to have been involved with the 2010 World Cup attacks on Kampala. MI5 was certain that the two remained in contact with their London-based extremist group, and that Muhammad was one of the key figures in the group during that time. But in 2012, something big would happen.

that year, both Bilal and Soccer would be killed by U.S. drone strikes in Somalia, and the London group that they were so closely intertwined with was shocked to learn about their deaths. MI5 at the time believed that the deaths of Bilal and Soccer would disrupt the extremist network and somewhat neutralized the threat, but they were dead wrong. You see, after Balal and Soccer were killed, the network of London militants were now fully convinced that it was time to leave England and join the bloody fight in person. and it galvanized them to take up arms against America. Muhammad was desperate to leave London for the Middle East,

and in early 2013, his father suggested that it might be easier to do so if he changed his name. And so he did, and he became a new man, a man named Muhammad al-Ayan, and quickly he changed his passport. Once again, plans were made to travel out of the United Kingdom, and eventually Muhammad arrived at Heathrow Airport with his father. Omar stated, he tried to leave again, and that's the time. when they interrogated him and my dad. My dad has never been in a British police station in his entire life. Never ever been arrested. Never had to go to a police station in his life. That was the

first time. It was at Heathrow. He got rejected. They took my brother to a room and they took my dad to a room and interrogated them. It was the security services, not normal police. One week later in early 2013, Muhammad would escape London, but it's still unknown exactly how he did it. It's been speculated that he took the channel rail link from Folkstone. the same way he did when he and his friend left for Portugal in 2011. Omar remembered the last conversation he had with his brother before he disappeared, and it was a concerning one of warning. He said,

He wasn't the type of guy to complain, but he would say certain jokes to me, saying, Don't be like me. He was always saying, learn from other people's mistakes. Look where I am. I can't get married and I can't get a proper job. I can't travel and I can't go nowhere.

Three days after Muhammad's disappearance, his family reported it to the police and issued a missing person's report. Four months later, the police finally arrived at the flat and told Muhammad's parents that they had information that he was in Syria. Keep in mind at the time, there was a massive war and bloody conflict going on throughout all of Syria and a number of other countries nearby. Of course, Muhammad's family didn't believe the officers, and they then stated that through their limited contact with their son, they knew that he was in Turkey assisting refugees, just doing God's work. But in 2013, a video was released by a new militant group called Kittai Balmuhazirin, a group that was now under a new leader, a man named Omar al-Shishanee.

The video showed a man with his face covered standing at the front of a band of brothers as they pledged allegiance to join forces with the new extremist army. And this video ended up being extremely important because it captured somebody familiar on camera. In fact, it's now believed that this is the first footage recorded that places Muhammad Mwazi in Syria. Under Omar al-Shishanis' rule, KAM decided to take their new group and join the Islamic State, a violent extremist group that, at the time, was being led by a man named Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Abu was a known terrorist who had earned his power and leadership while working with al-Qaeda and Iraq. And under this new leadership, Muhammad Shishani and other known United Kingdom recruits,

including people like Alexander Cody, Ayn Davis, and al-Shafi al-Shik began a hostage-taking operation in northern Syria. And at this point, Muhammad was bloodthirsty, and he was ready to take revenge. Finally, he was free to practice his religion. Finally, he was free from the ever-present eyes of MI5 and other intelligence authorities. Finally, he was free to move as freely as he would like to. And it wouldn't take long for Muhammad to earn a reputation for his brutality and his ability to follow orders. During the summer of 2013, both Muhammad and Omar al-Shishani were in Raqa, a city in Syria,

with Baghdadi's army, and while Omar's, Shishani was the commander of the jihadi fighters, Muhammad was promoted and given the job of torturing and guarding prisoners that had been captured. But before we dive even deeper, a little context. So, the Islamic State, or ISIS, or ISIL, was founded in 2004 by an Iraqi extremist named Abu Musab al-Zarkawi after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. The sudden loss of power back then had allowed a variety of militant groups, including al-Qaeda, who had known associations with Osama bin Laden to garner strength and establish a caliphate or Islamic state, governed by their own interpretations of Islamic law. After Zarqawi's death in 2006, Abu Bakar al-Baghdadi emerged as the new

leader and the group would eventually become ISIS in 2013. Under ISIS, the group imposed an extreme version of Sunni Islam on the territories that it controlled, mostly through violence, both physical and sexual and intimidation. Their purpose was to instill fear, assert control, recruit fighters and promote their extremist ideology through terrorist attacks, beheading, sexual slavery and violence, mass executions, kidnapping, suicide attacks, and forced conversions to Islam. Driven by an intense hatred of the West and their Arab allies, Muhammad Mwazi had no problem using extreme violence on the group's hostages. In fact, one of the first hostages abducted by ISIS was a man named Javier Espinoza, a Spanish journalist.

After he was eventually freed from the group's clutches, Javier recalled being handcuffed in the back of a truck, and sitting underneath them was a massive box of explosives. Javier had been in Syria covering the war since 2012 and was eventually kidnapped in the spring of 2014. Javier said, They had me sit on the floor barefoot with a shaved head, a thick beard dressed in the orange uniform that had made Guantanamo, the American prison, famous. Jihadi John wanted maximum drama. He had brought along an antique sword of the kind Muslim armies used in the Middle Ages. It was a very important. was a blade of almost a meter in length with a silver handle.

And now we can see the transformation really taking effect, and Mohammed was now fully committed to his role in ISIS and Jihad. In fact, at this point, Muhammad Mwazi had fully transformed himself into the brutal, unforgiving character that the world would eventually know as Jihadi John, a ruthless killer responsible for murders of several ISIS hostages, Javier, the reporter from Spain,

recalled the pleasure that Jihadi John took when he tortured his victims, saying, quote, he caressed my neck with a blade, but kept talking. Feel it? Cold, isn't it? Can you imagine the pain you'll feel when it cuts?

Unimaginable pain. The first hit will sever your veins. The blood mixes with your saliva. The second blow opens your neck. You wouldn't be able to breathe through your nose at this stage. Just your throat. You'd make some amusing, guttural sounds. I've seen it before.

You'll all squirm like animals, like pigs. But the third blow will take off your head. I'd put it on your back. He then drew his pistol from his leather holster and placed it against my head and pulled the trigger three times. Click, click, click. It's called a mock execution.

but not even this terrifying intimidation seemed to satisfy him." Hostages referred to their group of captors as the Beatles, not only because they all had British accents, but also because they enjoyed beating people. The hostages that were taken by ISIS were held under the watch of Jihadi John, and they were separated from their captors by being placed into a separate room, intersected with a broken glass door. The hostages reported that the men would burst into this room,

screaming and shouting with their faces covered, threatening to beat up or torture one or all of their hostages. On one particularly gruesome occasion, the Beatles told one of their hostages to come to the broken glass door that served as an entrance to their makeshift prison. The hostage later reported, quote, Once in position, Jihadi John took a red pen and began to draw a sword on the hostage's face, letting him know in this macabre way that he would end his days in Syria beheaded.

The pen tip broke before he finished the sketch, but Jihadi John wanted to finish his work with a sharpened pencil, already cut almost like a knife, tearing the skin of the cheek with a vengeance, and leaving a visible wound on his skin. face outlined by the scar." Soon the hostages had named their captors after members of the famous British band, The Beatles, because they all spoke with British accents and they were for them.

Jihadi John was considered the group's boss, and he was the person who gave orders and took the most pleasure in the torture. Jihadi George was known as the Punisher, and one of the most violent members inside the group. Jihadi Paul was another enforcer, and finally there was Jihadi Ringo, considered the least violent, and also referred to as the preacher of the group. According to one of the hostages, Jihadi John was a pure psychopath who received great pleasure in causing fear in the hostages.

It was even known amongst ISIS members that the Beatles were not people to mess with. It was muttered in circles that, whenever the Beatles showed up, there was some kind of physical beating or torture. The group were also even reprimanded at one point by the leaders of ISIS for being a little too brutal towards their captives,

but that didn't stop anything. They continued torturing the innocent hostages in the most depraved ways imaginable. In fact, they also gained a reputation amongst their peers as having a taste for the macabre. For example, they were big fans of mock executions, as we stated before,

and at one point they even crucified one of their hostages against a wall in front of the other captives. They also regularly used shock treatment and tasers to harm their hostages, and they weren't afraid to waterboard. This was all in addition to the daily beatings and whippings that they laid down upon the captives.

So, being under the watch of the beach, Beatles was akin to being directly in hell. Javier Espinoza was one of 16 hostages that were eventually released by the Islamic State in early 2014. And according to Robert Verkaic, both France and Spain ended up paying several million dollars to the kidnappers for the freedom of their hostages. However, not all of the hostages were so lucky and made it out of this experience alive. On November 22nd, 2012, after meeting with another journalist at an internet cafe near the Syria-Turkey border, American journalist James Wright Foley was kidnapped by the Islamic State. James was born on October 18, 1973, in Evanston, Illinois. He spent

his childhood in New Hampshire and was raised as a Catholic. James came from a big family. He had four siblings, in fact, and he went on to attend prestigious schools and work as a journalist in the Middle East. It seems that James had a passion for telling wartime stories and for exposing atrocities while placing himself occasionally directly in the line of fire. At the time of his abduction, James was working for the Boston-based Global Post, an international publication, and in 2011, he had headed to Libya to cover the uprising against Omar Gaddafi, and at the time had embedded himself with rebel fighters in order to capture the full story. But back to his abduction. That afternoon, after meeting with another journalist by the name of John Cantile,

James boarded a taxi with his translator and was headed towards the border. However, about an hour after departing, a group of armed men pulled up beside the taxi, began firing shots from their rifles into the air, and forced the car off the road. After this, they ripped open the doors of the taxi cab, snatched James out from the vehicle, and violently shoved him into theirs. Neither James's translator nor the taxi driver were targeted. Only James. And ironically, James had allegedly been meeting with John Cantile to work on a movie together,

about John's own personal experience being captured and taken hostage just a few years prior and his eventual dramatic rescue by four armed members of the free Syrian army. After being taken, James Foley was allegedly then taken to a Syrian Air Force Intelligence Complex in Damascus. It should be noted that John Cantillo was also eventually captured by ISIS and would end up imprisoned alongside James. Along with other Western hostages, James was held in a cramped cell, starved and given dirty water to drink. According to another hostage, a KAM jihadist who refused to join ISIS said that he and James were moved numerous times until they were given to the extremist group in Raqa, where jihadi John was located. According to another hostage, 23-year-old Jijon Bontink, a KAM jihadist who refused to join ISIS said that he and James were moved numerous times until they were given to the extremist group in Raqa where Jihadi John was located. Jijon eventually said that during their captivity, he watched James being told. portrait on multiple occasions, as he was subjected to waterboarding, electrocution, starvation,

and was forced to stand for days at a time. Hostages were also forced to fight one another, and watch videos by Islamic extremist group Al-Shabaab. James, at 40 years old, had already been imprisoned before in 2011, in Libya, with another freelance reporter named Claire Morgana Gillis. You see, on the morning of April 5, 2011, James Foley, fellow American Claire Gillis, and Spanish photographer Manu Bravo were attacked by armed men and eventually captured near Braga Libya by forces loyal to Moammar Gaddafi.

In the gunfire, fellow photojournal and friend of the group, Anton Hamerl, was shot and killed. And this violence really had erupted out of nowhere. After all of a sudden done, James and Claire claimed that when the shooting started, they both had heard their friend Hamerl scream out, help. But there was nothing they could do.

Afterwards, the group of hostages were savagely beaten by the pro-Gaddafi forces, and then taking into captivity as their prisoners. After James was eventually rescued, he stated, quote, Once I saw Anton laying there dead, it was like everything had changed. The whole world has changed. I don't even know that I felt some of the blows, end quote. After she was rescued as well, fellow reporter Claire said,

quote, we all glanced down at him as we were being taken by, and I saw him just lying in a pool of blood, and then we were put into the truck and our heads were pushed down. We weren't able to see anything that happened to him after that, end quote. Eventually, though, James, and the other hostages were released from the prison only 44 days later and afterwards James returned back to America to Milwaukee specifically to thank the community for praying for his safe return he had survived an extremely traumatic life-threatening situation and the people that took him hostage

could have killed him at any second and one would think that that would stop someone from ever wanting to put themselves in the same type of situation again however in an interview after his return and James said, you go through different emotions when you're in captivity. These weird extreme ideas of where you are based on this capture. You don't want to be defined as that guy who got captured in 2011. I believe frontline journalism is important because without it, we can't tell the world how bad it might be.

And like I just said, this horrific experience didn't stop James from wanting to return to the area. And in fact, within the year, he was already back in Libya and was at the scene of Muammar Gaddafi's capture with a global post correspondent Tracy Shelton on October 20th, 2011. Well, we were going out to report on what was actually happening on the front lines. It's very important in this kind of war to see if what the rebels are saying they're doing is actually true. So it's important to go out there and confirm and to go back to report to our agencies.

That day, we hitched a ride up to the front lines, and we were told that Qadhafi forces were very close. We decided to get off the road because we felt it was safer due to normally shelling coming from the road. Unfortunately, Qaddafi forces came right over the hill, and within seconds we were under heavy fire. The rest of the rebel vehicles retreated, and we were under heavy fire, and immediately pinned down and had to surrender. I jumped up, tried to say we were journalists. Before I was captured, I saw our friend and colleague Anton Hamill had been shot and was severely wounded. Then I was hit several times with a butt of AK-47 punched and dragged into a vehicle with my hands tied behind my back.

You don't know what ultimately happened to Anton, correct? We believe due to the severity of his injuries, he passed. He passed away. And it was the most difficult thing was not being able to tell anybody for those 44 days we were in captivity. First thing was accused us of being a spy. And we knew right away we had to stick to our story. We had to absolutely be truthful, who we were reporting for, even how many reports we had filed, because we feared they might check those, that information.

and then it just became this very strange process of constantly being asked the same questions over and over again in some kind of court. James believed that through reporting in conflict areas, he would be able to tell the human stories of individuals caught in the midst of war. He sought to shed light on the atrocities of war and provide a voice to those affected by the violence. In his blog titled A World of Troubles, James wrote, it's hard to understand the Syrian regime is targeting men, women, and children with such careless brutality. We've become numb by the news reports featuring bloody activists' videos. It wasn't until I saw the shrouds, the dismembered corpses, just pieces of bodies blown apart by mortars launched at random

into a city of 100,000 after evening prayers that I felt it is inevitably true across Syria. I believe that front-line journalism is important, you know, without these photos and videos and first-hand experience, we can't really tell the world how bad it might be. After he was kidnapped, nobody had any idea what had happened to James, and his family was going absolutely crazy. His disappearance made headlines in the news back in America, but there were no real leads on what exactly might have happened to James Foley. But on November 26, 2013, nearly one year after James is kidnapping, his family and his editor at the Global Post, Phil Balboni, received an email that read,

Hello, we have James. We want to negotiate for him. He is safe. He is our friend and we do not want to hurt him. We want money fast. I know you received an email asking for a huge amount of money. Did you, when you got that email, what did you think? At that time, we were delighted to receive the proof of life questions and to have any contact with them. We were given hope by that. However, their requests were impossible for us. 100 million euro or all Muslim prisoners to be freed. The requests from the terrorists were totally directed towards the government, really.

And yet we as an American family had to figure out how to answer them. So there was a real disconnect with that. According to the documentary Unmasking Jihadi John, CIA Director, John, General David Patriots stated, quote, we don't negotiate with terrorists or pay ransoms or pursue those kinds of activities because it just begets more terrorism. It encourages more actions. But of course, it is a very difficult policy to explain to the loved ones of someone

who has been kidnapped and, of course, the overall policy objective. I think even they can understand why. But of course, they want an exception in their case. case." James's mother, Diane Foley, stated that the emails continued back and forth for about one month until the captors cut off all communication. At one point during her correspondence with the terrorists, Diane asked if she could ask three questions to the captors that only James would know the answers to.

They allowed this, and when the captors sent back the correct answers to her questions, Diane knew that her son was still alive. Eventually, though, James' cellmates, who hailed from France and Spain, were released, and they shared the good news that James was indeed still alive. After hearing this news, Diane remained hopeful that sometime in the future, James too would be released. After all, she had already been through this situation once before,

and James had been able to return home with no permanent, permanent physical injuries. One of the French hostages released admitted that he had been held with James from August of 2013 until his release in April of 2014. He said, quote, James was an extraordinary person

with a strong character. He was a pleasant companion in detention because he was solid and collective. He never gave into the pressure and violence of the kidnappers. End quote. During this time period, Philip Balboni and his company Global Post, who James had worked for, spent millions of dollars attempting to locate and save James.

They even hired an international security firm named Crawl Inc., who eventually were able to locate James and provide Philip and the Foley family with James' near-exact location. But no government at the time was willing to take action, and the only thing that Philip could do was report on the current location of his good friend turned hostage. and the Foley family, meanwhile, had been extremely public with their cries for help. They had been on every major cable news show, including programs like The Today Show, pleading for anyone with information to come forward and help bring James home safely. They also ran a Twitter page, which tweeted out the number of days James had been missing at the time.

In June of 2014, ISIS released a Danish photo journalist named Daniel Rye Autosin from their control, and as it turned out, Daniel had been held captive with James for an extended period of time. of time. After his release, Daniel phoned James' family to recite a memorized message that came to be known as Foley's final letter. In this final message to his family and to the world at large, James directly addressed each of the members of his family and described his time spent in captivity in a cell with 17 other hostages, who passed a time with improvised strategy games and lectures. The Foley family, after listening to former Danish prisoner Daniel, tell them the message eventually wrote it down and released the letter on their Facebook page.

The last message from James Foley read as follows. Dear family and friends, I remember going to the mall with dad, a very long bike ride with mom. I remember so many great family times that take me away from this prison. Dreams of family and friends take me away and happiness fills my heart. I know you are thinking of me and praying for me, and I am so thankful. I feel you all, especially when I pray. I pray for you to stay strong and to believe. I really feel I can touch you even in this darkness when I pray.

18 of us have been held together in one cell, which has helped me. We have had each other to have endless long conversations about movies, trivia, sports. We have played games made up of scraps found in our cell. We have found ways to play checkers, chess, and risk, and have had tournaments of competition, spending some days preparing strategies for the next day's game or lecture. The games and teaching each other have helped the time pass. They have been a huge help. We repeat stories and laugh to break the tension.

I have had weak and strong days. We are so grateful when anyone is freed, but of course yearn for our own freedom. We try to encourage each other and share strength. We are being fed better now and daily. We have tea, occasional coffee. I have regained most of my weight loss last year. I think a lot about my brothers and sister.

I remember playing werewolf in the dark with Michael and so many other adventures. I think of chasing Mati and tea around the kitchen counter. It makes me happy to think of them. If there is any money left in my bank account, I wanted to go to Michele and Matthew. I am so proud of you, Michael, and thankful to you for happy childhood memories and to you and Christy for happy adult ones. and Big John, how I enjoyed visiting you and Cress in Germany. Thank you for welcoming me.

I think a lot about Roweau and try to imagine what Jack is like. I hope he has Roro's personality and Mark. So proud of you too, bro. I think of you on the West Coast and hope you are doing some snowboarding and camping. I especially remember us going to the Comedy Club in Boston together and our big hug after the special moments keep me hopeful. Katie, so very proud of you. You are the strongest and best of us all.

I think of you working so hard, helping people as a nurse. I am so glad we texted just before I was captured. I pray I can come to your wedding. Now I am sounding like Grammy. Grammy, please take your medicine. Take walks and keep dancing. I plan to take you out to margaritas when I get home.

Stay strong. because I am going to need your help to reclaim my life. Jim. About a month after Diane Foley received that message from James, his mom traveled to France in July of 2014 for a meeting with French officials to see if they would help with the release of her son. During this trip, the Foley family received another email from ISIS.

But this time, the tone of the email was more demanding. They threatened to execute James. if they didn't come up with the requested 100 million euros that had been demanded in the first email. Yes, you heard that right. ISIS was asking the Foley family for 100 million euros, or the release of Muslim prisoners being held in America. But James' parents couldn't secure that much money,

and they had no political power to even influence one single prisoner's release. So essentially, ISIS was making these outlandish claims, not towards James' family, but towards the United States government itself. But as we mentioned, the U.S. government would have nothing to do with negotiations with terrorists. But back to France. On August 12, 2014, one last email was sent to the Foley family, and here's what it read. A message to the American government and their sheep-like. like citizens. We have left you alone since your disgraceful defeat in Iraq. We did not interfere in your country or attack your citizens while they were safe in their homes, despite our capability

to do so. As for the scum of your society who were held prisoner by us, they dared to enter the lion's den and were eaten. You were given many chances to negate it to the release of your people via cash transactions, as other governments have accepted. We have also offered prisoner exchanges to free the Muslims currently in your detention like our sister Dr. Afia Siddiqui. However, you proved very quickly to us that this is not what you are interested in. You have no motivation to deal with the Muslims except with the language of force, a language you were given in Arabic translation when you attempted to occupy the land of Iraq. Now you return to bomb the Muslims of Iraq once again, this time resorting to Arial attacks and proxy.

armies, all the while cowardly shying away from a face-to-face confrontation. Today, our swords are unsheathed towards you, government and citizens alike, and we will not stop until we quench our thirst for your blood. You do not spare our weak, elderly, women or children, so we will not spare yours. You and your citizens will pay the price of your bombings, the first of which being the blood of the American citizen, James. Fowley. He will be executed as a direct result of your transgressions towards us. James' family had no idea what to do. Nobody would help them. The U.S. government clearly wasn't going to intervene and rescue their son, and there was no chance they would be able to raise

over 100 million euros to pay the ransom that ISIS had demanded. So then, on August 19th, Islamic State uploaded a harrowing video to YouTube titled, quote, A Message to America. The video titled A Message to Hashtag America from the hashtag Islamic State on YouTube began with a clip of then-President Barack Obama's announcement that they would begin hitting ISIL or ISIS with targeted airstrikes in Iraq. The video then faded in to reveal James Foley, dressed in an orange jumpsuit with his head shaved and his arms tied behind his back, sitting on his knees in the middle of an open desert. Next to James stood a tall man dressed in all black,

a man that would later be identified as Muhammad Mwazi, or Jihadi John. James was then forced to read out a statement that went as follows. I call on my friends, family, and loved ones to rise up against my real killers, the United States government. For what will happen to me is only a result of their complacency and criminality. I wish I had more time. I wish I could have the hope of freedom of seeing my family once again, but that ship is sailed. I guess all in all, I wish I wasn't American.

This is James Wright Foley, an American citizen of your country. As a government, you have been at the forefront of the aggression towards the Islamic State. You have plotted against us and gone far out of your way to find reasons to interfere in our affairs. Today, your military air force is attacking us daily in Iraq. Your strikes have caused casualties amongst Muslims. You are no longer fighting an insurgency. We are an Islamic army and a state that has been accepted by a large number of Muslims worldwide. So effectively, any aggression towards the Islamic state is an aggression towards Muslims

from all walks of life who have accepted the Islamic caliphate as their leadership. So any attempt by you, Obama, to deny the Muslims their rights of living in safety under the Islam, caliphate will result in the bloodshed of your people. Moments later, on camera, Muhammad, or jihadi John, placed the blade against James' neck and began to saw into his flesh. For some reason, unlike in other videos, ISIS chose not to include footage of James' head actually being cut off in their final edit. But off camera, blood began to spray across the desert sand in James' bright orange jumpsuit, and ultimately, Muhammad decapitated him. But when the camera turned back on and the video came back in, viewers were greeted with a grotesque and disturbing sight. Jihadi John stood beside the corpse of James, with his decapitated head placed upon his chest,

and warned that if President Barack Obama did not stop the U.S. drone strikes against ISIS, then another hostage would be murdered on camera. The video which spread like wildfire on social media would leave the world shocked and appalled. At first, people doubted that the footage was authentic. But soon enough, intelligence agencies from across the world began claiming that they had examined every frame of the video and had determined that, yes, it sadly was real, that James Foley really was dead, and that more videotaped executions were definitely to follow. On August 20th, President Barack Obama issued a statement about James' murder and the Islamic State. Now, Jim Foley's life stands in stark contrast to his killers. Let's be clear about ISIL.

They have rampaged across cities and villages killing innocent, on-armed civilians in cowardly acts of violence. They abduct women and children and subject them to torture and rape and slavery. They have murdered Muslims, both Sunni and Shia, by the thousands. They target Christians and religious minorities. driving them from their homes, murdering them when they can. For no other reason than they practice a different religion.

They declare their ambition to commit genocide against an ancient people. So ISIL speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents. No just God would stand for people. God would stand for what they did yesterday and what they do every single day. ISIL has no ideology of any value to human beings. Their ideology is bankrupt.

They may claim out of expediency that they are at war with the United States or the West, but the fact is they terrorize their neighbors and offer them nothing but an endless slavery to their empty vision and the collapse of any definition of civilized behavior. After his death, the world mourned for James Foley. Both Colin and I actually remember when this happened and the impact it had. It was definitely frightening to see an American citizen forced to denounce his home country on camera before being brutally murdered. A day or so after the footage was released, his mother, Diane, took to the free James Foley Facebook page and posted an emotionally charged message that in part read, quote,

We have never been prouder of our son Jim. He gave his life trying to expose the world to the sufferings of the Syrian people. We implore the kidnappers to spare the lives of the remaining hostages. Like Jim, they are innocent. They have no control over American government policy in Iraq, Syria, or anywhere else in the world. We thank Jim for all of the joy he gave us. he was an extraordinary son, brother, journalist, and person. Please respect our privacy in the days ahead as we mourn and cherish Jim.

End quote. After his death, a multitude of awards were bestowed onto James, and a number of scholarships were started up in his memory. Various news agencies began to crack down and told the reporters that they would no longer accept stories from parts of the world that at the time, they themselves, the executives, wouldn't even travel to. Sculptures were made in honor of James.

And even Pope Francis himself called the Foley family to express his condolences. This was truly a global event. But all of this attention in the press and media only emboldened ISIS, and they were just ramping up for their campaign of terror. Shockingly, only two weeks later, on September 2nd, 2014, another video was uploaded to the internet. This time, 31-year-old journalist for Time and Foreign Policy Magazine Stephen Sautloff was shown kneeling in an orange jumpsuit beside Jihadi John.

They were once again out in the same desert area, with no buildings or distinctive landscapes in sight, only mountains of sand and the beating bright desert sun. Just like James, Stephen Sotloff had been kidnapped in Syria in August. of 2013. But unlike the Foley family, Stevens family members in Miami had remained virtually silent on the issue, believing if they came forward claiming that they knew that he had been kidnapped, he would have been harmed by his captors. Stephen's mother surely said, Stephen is a journalist who traveled to the Middle East to cover the suffering of Muslims at the hands of tyrants. Stephen is a loyal and generous son, brother and grandson. He is an

honorable man and has always tried to protect the weak. But let's go back a little bit. On July 15th, 2013, over a year before the video's release, Stephen had landed in Israel to attend his friend and former roommate Benny Scholder's wedding. Stephen had also planned to spend a few weeks in Israel and the surrounding areas doing some journalism. You see, Stephen Sotloff, who was born on May 11, 1983 in Miami, Florida, was the grandson of Holocaust survivors, and this family history had inspired him to become a voice for the voiceless. Stephen had had a colorful academic career marked by major accomplishments and he held citizenship in both the united states and Israel throughout his career in journalism Stephen had worked hard to expose atrocities and like we said before

give a voice to the voiceless or victims of violence in war-torn countries Stephen had spent time in Israel Egypt Yemen Libya Turkey Syria and various other Middle Eastern countries reporting on the suffering experienced by everyday people he spoke fluent Arabic and according to friends and family members deeply loved the Islamic world. However, his work would put him in the crosshairs of militant groups because he exposed the atrocities that people every day held under the control of regimes and militant groups experienced and had even taken footage of a hospital in Aleppo, a city that at the time was controlled by ISIS that had been bombed.

The video had showed a gruesome, troubling site. In fact, Janine Di Giovanni, a Middle East editor of the publication newsweek, told CNN, he was concerned that he had been on some kind of a list, and this had been around the time that ISIS had been showing up and taking over checkpoints that had been manned before the rebels. And he thought that he had angered some of the rebels. He didn't know which ones by taking footage of a hospital in Aleppo that had been bombed, and he was very concerned about this. Stephen constantly exposed corruption and violence that was occurring in Middle Eastern countries,

and the regimes that ran them or attempted to control them were sick of it. But like we said before, Stephen had landed in Israel on July 15, 2013, to attend his friend Benny's wedding. He had been to the Middle East many, many times before this. It felt like a second home to him. During this trip, he visited the town of Killis, a small settlement near the border of Turkey and Syria, just four miles north of the Syrian border.

While he was in town, Stephen checked into a hotel called the Hotel Istanbul, a local place filled with all sorts of individuals. The hotel ended up becoming a home away from home for international photographers looking to document the war. It was also a home for Syrian refugees seeking peace, tired and run-down aid workers, and even those who seek to cross the border into Syria to join ISIS itself. At around the same time that Stephen checked into this hotel, a German publication had given the hotel a nickname,

the Hotel of Madness. At night, you could see the smoke rising on the horizon from the distant airstrikes in Syria, and to try to keep the place from smelling. The staff at the hotel began to hang up urinal cakes from the mirrors and the guest bathrooms. It definitely wasn't the safest place to be at the time, but regardless, out of passion to tell these stories,

that's where Stephen had headed. Once he arrived at the hotel in the darkness of night, Stephen met with another journalist, a man named Ben Topp, at the only bar in town. Later on, Ben would write an article about his encounter,

titled, quote, was U.S. journalist Steven Saltloft, a marked man, which eventually was published in The Daily Beast, and here's what Ben had to say about their encounter. Stephen Sotloff checked into room 303

at the Hotel Istanbul on August 1, 2013. It was a double. dodgy time to be at the Turkish-Syrian border. Jihadist fighters had recently snatched several Western journalists and aid workers on the road connecting Kailas to Aleppo, and rumors were flying that Westerners might even be under surveillance in Killis. It was said that spies on the Turkish side could be tipping off jihadis and criminal gangs on the Syrian side. Those groups were eager to get their hands on anyone who could be used for ransom or political sway. By the time Sautloff

arrived in town, the flow of journalists in and out of Aleppo had diminished to less than a trickle. Local fixers were hurting for business, especially those whose clients had been previously targeted for kidnapping attempts. Many of them started taking some of the odd jobs in town just to stay afloat. One fixer, whom I'll call Mahmoud, not his real name, even took the mother of a dead Italian jihadist to Aleppo's front line so that she could see her son's corpse decaying in the street, irretrievable and surrounded by government snipers. Other fixers had taken in various war tourists and crazies, but were growing increasingly nervous that a fool might take out a camera at the wrong checkpoint and get them both in trouble with the Islamic State. Over beer at Killis's only bar,

Sotloff told me he was sick of being beaten up and shot at and accused of being a spy. Just the day before, Turkish police had hit and pepper sprayed him for taking pictures at a protest in a nearby city. He told me he wanted to quit reporting for a little while, at least on conflict in the Middle East, and maybe apply to graduate school back home in Florida. But first, he wanted one last Syria run. He said he was chasing a good story, but kept the specifics close to his chest. That next morning, Stephen set off into Syria with a local fixer, or a local who worked with journalist and other international figures to help solve issues that arise during their travels. And although nobody knows exactly what happened in this situation, it is theorized that

the fixer betrayed Stephen and sold him out to the local jihadis who wanted him dead. On August 4th, 2013, Stephen, along with his fixer and the fixer's brother and cousins, was kidnapped at gunpoint by ISIS. He then was held for over a year under the control of jihadis until December 2nd, 2014, when the world would be shown the disturbing fate of what Stephen had faced. The video uploaded by ISIS titled A Second Message to America starts with a news clip from a press conference that Barack Obama had held on August 20th that year, condemning the actions of ISIS and the beheading of James Foley. The video then faded in to reveal Stephen, once again clad in an orange jumpsuit with an attached wireless microphone on his knees with his hands tied behind his back.

Then, just like with James, Stephen was forced to deliver a statement. This is what he said. I am Stephen Joel Sautloff. I'm sure you know exactly who I am by now and why I am appearing before you, and now this time for my message. Obama, your foreign policy of intervention in Iraq was supposed to be for the preservation of American lives and interests. So why is it that I am paying the price of your interference with my life? Am I not an American citizen? You've spent billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars and we've lost thousands of our troops in our previous fighting against the Islamic State. So where is the people's interest in reigniting this war?

From what little I know about foreign policy, I remember a time you could not win an election without promising to bring our troops back home. from Iraq and Afghanistan and to close down Guantanamo. Here you are now, Obama, nearing the end of your term, and having achieving none of the above and deceivingly marching us the American people into the blazing fire.

Your foreign policy of intervention in Iraq was supposed to be for the preservation of American lives and interests. So why is it that I'm having to pay the price of your interference with my life? After Stephen is done talking, Jihadi John points his night directly at the camera as he speaks.

And he said, I'm back, Obama, and I'm back because of your arrogant foreign policy towards the Islamic State, because of your insistence on continuing your bombings in Amarly, Zamar, and the Mosul Dam. Despite our serious warnings, you, Obama, have yet again

through your actions to get another American citizen. So just as your missiles continue to strike our people, our knife, will continue to strike the necks of your lives. people. The video showed Jihadi John placed the knife against Stephen's neck before violently cutting into him. Once again, just like with James Foley, the actual footage of Stephen being

beheaded was removed from the film. But after the camera cuts, the viewer was once again greeted with a disturbing sight. The final shot of the video showed Jihadi John standing next to the corpse of Stephen, with his head placed upon his head. back. And once again, Jihadi John threatened to murder another hostage. This time, British aid worker David Hines. He said David would be killed if President Obama didn't comply with their wishes. Stephen's mother Shirley pleaded for her son's life publicly, only days before his execution. She said, quote, I'm sending this message to you. My son, Stephen, is in your hands. You can grant him amnesty. I ask that you please release my child. I ask that you use your authority to spare his life."

Unfortunately, the public executions of James Foley and Stephen Sautloff would set off a chain of more executions by ISIS. The next video uploaded showed jihadi John next to the British aid worker, David Hines. David had worked for a French agency called Acted, who had headed to the war zone to help Syria provide Syrian refugees with housing, food, and water. In March of 2013, David and another Italian worker named Frederico Malka were kidnapped after a car chase where their tires were shot out. Fortunately, Frederico was released after the Italian government paid a hefty fee of several million euros, but the same could not be said for David. Author Robert Verkike said that David's background in the military could have been a factor that sealed his fate.

Another hostage who had been in the same cell as David described his torture as more brutal than the others. He said that David had been beaten so badly that he began vomiting. In September 2014, a new video titled A Message to the Allies of America was posted on the internet. Once again, the video faded in on the desert with the hostage clad in an orange jumpsuit. This time it was hostage David Haynes, and next to him, jihadi John. My name is David Corthorn Haynes. I would like to declare that I hold you, David Cameron, entirely responsible for my execution. He entered voluntarily into a coalition with the United States against the Islamic State, just as your predecessor, Tony Blair did, following a trend

amongst our British Prime Ministers who can't find a courage to say no to the Americans. Unfortunately, it is we, the British public, that in the end will pay the price for our Parliament's selfish decisions. Jihadi John, wearing his infamous black outfit with his face covered, threatened. This British man has to pay the price for your promise, Cameron, to arm the Peshmerga against the Islamic State. Ironically, he has spent a decade of his life serving under the same Royal Air Force, that is responsible for delivering those arms. Your evil alliance with America,

which continues to strike the Muslims of Iraq, and most recently bombed the Haditha Dam, will only accelerate your destruction. And playing the role of the obedient lapdog, Cameron, you only drag you and your people into another bloody and unwinnable war. After Jihadi John's speech, the camera then faded to black,

and once again, returned to show the bloody, headless corpse of David Haynes lying in the hot desert sand. And once again, Jihadi John then the war, threatened to murder another British aid worker named Alan Henning, saying, If you, Cameron, persist in fighting the Islamic State, then you, like your master Obama,

will have the blood of your people on your hands. Alan Henning was a volunteer aid worker who had decided to go to Syria in December of 2013. His mission had been to help raise money to buy medical equipment for refugees, but unfortunately, his trip was cut short and he was kidnapped by a masked gunman as he crossed the Turkish border. After David Haynes' execution, Alan's wife, if Barbara appealed to ISIS for the safe release of her husband. I have a further message for Islamic State.

We have not abandoned Alan and we continue in our attempts to communicate with you. I had no contact from Islamic State holding Alan other than an audio file of him pleading for his life. Muslims across the globe continue to question Islamic State over Alan's fate. Their position regarding his statement is unequivocal. He is innocent. Some say wrong time, wrong place. Alan was volunteering with his Muslim friends to help the people of Syria. He was in the right place, doing the right thing.

We are at a loss why those leading Islamic State cannot open their hearts and minds to the truth about Alan's humanitarian motives for going to Syria and why they continue to ignore the verdict of their own justice system. Surely those who wish to be seen as a state, will act in a statesman way, statesman-like way, by showing mercy and providing clemency. I ask again, supported by the voices across the world, for Islamic State to spare Alan's life. Alan, we miss you and we're dreadfully concerned for your safety, but we are given so much hope by the outcry across the world as to your imprisonment.

I ask Islamic State, please release him. We need him back home. Thank you. Unfortunately, the message would not be heard by ISIS, and on October 3, 2014, another video titled, Another Message to America and its Allies, was uploaded to the internet. Once again, Jihadi John is shown next to Alan in an orange jumpsuit. Statements were made condemning the governments of England and America,

and eventually, Alan was brutally decapitated. Jihadi John, once again standing next to a headless body, then threatened to murder again. And this time, it was an American aid worker named Peter Kasig. Jihadi John, the mass executioner, then stated, Obama, you have started your aerial bombardment in Sharm, Syria, which keeps on striking our people. So it's only right we continue to strike the necks of your people.

Peter Kasig was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on February 19, 1988, and had served in the U.S. Army as a ranger for years before he had decided to devote his life to work. as a humanitarian worker. Peter had been unfortunately kidnapped in October 2013, while on his way to eastern Syria to deliver food and medical supplies, and when his parents learned that he was being held by ISIS, they too pleaded for his safe release. Interestingly, while he was held in captivity, Peter, who formerly considered himself to be a Methodist, converted to Islam and changed his name to Abdul Rahman Kasek.

On October 3, 2014, shortly before he was murdered, Peter's parents released a video in which they stressed that his conversion to Islam was not forced and that he had expressed a desire to convert even before he had been taken hostage. Two weeks before he was set to be executed, ISIS allowed Peter to call his parents and he explained that his life was in jeopardy if the U.S. didn't stop their airstrikes. The voice to me was agonizing to hear. It was the first time you had heard his voice in a year. Over here. Now the Kassigs are asking for mercy, appealing directly to ISIS through YouTube and Twitter messages. Have you felt that that's falling on any ears that are willing to listen?

I don't know that it is, but I have to try it. Because I need to know. Have his captors asked for anything? No, they demand. They simply demand. And their demands have always been ones that we cannot accommodate. It's just beyond what's reasonable in terms of money, in terms of your power. Right.

In both cases, yes. And we have sent them back messages that we cannot do what you ask. We have tried, but we don't have the power to do it. But once again, Peter's parents were virtually powerless, and their pleas for help fell on deaf ears. There was just nothing they could do to stop what was coming. And on November 16th, 2014, Peter Kasig was publicly executed by ISIS in another video uploaded to the internet. Good morning again. We are going first to London and CBS News veteran Iraq correspondent Charlie Daggeta for more on this atrocity of Charlie. Good morning, Bob. With the video surface this morning, it appears to show that same English-speaking ISIS militant seen in previous videos claiming to beheaded, Peter Kazig.

Unlike those previous videos, this one did not show Kazagalai before the alleged beheading. The 26-year-old aid worker was captured in Syria just over a year ago while trying to deliver food. He's a former Army ranger who served in Iraq, and he had set up his own agency. His family is from Indiana. They released a statement today saying they're aware of the reports of the death of their treasured son, but they're awaiting confirmation from the U.S. government. The National Security Council said this morning they're trying to confirm the authenticity. of the video, but if true, the U.S. government is appalled by the brutal murder of an innocent

American aid worker. The 15-minute video included a gory scene, which reported to show the beheading of more than a dozen Syrian soldiers. And unlike previous videos that usually cut away, this one showed every last detail. Bob, thank you so much, Charlie. Interestingly, this video appeared to be different, as ISIS did not show Peter being decapitated, nor did they threaten to murder another Western hostage. According to Time magazine Peter, an Indiana native and former Army Ranger that served in Iraq, did not have a scripted message. And Jihadi John said in the video, quote,

Peter doesn't have much to say. It is important to note that either something went wrong during the beheading or Peter simply refused to read what was given to him, something his parents and the nation believed showed his silence. courage and his dedication to the Ranger Creed that states, quote, energetically will I meet the enemies of my country. I shall defeat them on the field of battle, for I am better trained and will fight with all of my might.

Surrender is not a Ranger word. I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy, and under no circumstances will I ever embarrass my country. End quote. Also, the group had changed the location of the video into analysts. It was now obvious where the group was recording these murders. Swiftly, authorities were able to determine that the group was near De Beek, Syria. And in this video, for the first time, the ISIS jihadists did not hide their faces.

Jihadijadjadjadjadjadjohn was the only person that continued to hide his identity. And after this, they would take a short break. In fact, it would be another three months before ISIS uploaded another hostage video, this time showing two Japanese hostages named Haruna Yikawa and journalist Kenji Goto. On January 20, 2015, ISIS released a video showing the two men in orange jumpsuits next to Jihadi John, as he said, you now have 72 hours to pressure your government in making a wise decision by paying the 200 million to save the lives of your citizens. But, sadly, the Japanese Prime Minister held the same views as the British Prime Minister held the

British Prime Minister and President Obama in that they too refused to negotiate with terrorists. And unfortunately, on January 24th, ISIS released a graphic photo that showed Japanese journalist Kenji Godo holding the head of Haruna Yukawa. According to sources, Haruna had gone to Syria to make sense of a life that had been filled with setbacks, including the recent death of his wife and his failed business in Japan. An audiophile was attached to the picture, and Kenji Goto could be heard reading a message in English, blaming the Japanese, Japanese government for the murder of Haruna. He also said that ISIS would be willing to release him. If Saija Mubarak Atrus al-Rashawi, a suicide bomber jailed in Jordan, would be given his freedom.

The CIA and FBI were alerted to the supposed location of the exchange of hostages. But at the last minute, ISIS got spooked and canceled the meeting. Then, on January 31st, 2015, they uploaded another video depicting Kenji Godo's beheading. Jihadi John said, To the Japanese government, you, like your foolish allies in the satanic coalition, have yet to understand that we, by Allah's grace, are an Islamic caliphate with authority and power,

an entire army thirsty for your blood. Abe, because of your reckless decision to take part in an unwinnable war, this knife will not only slaughter Kenji, but will also carry on and cause carnage wherever your people are found. So let the nightmare for Japan begin. Three days after Kenji's decapitation, ISIS uploaded another video that showed a Jordanian prisoner named Muath al-Kasabath being burned to death inside of a cage. But this was a major turning point.

This was a major mistake. And it said that this video jumpstarted the downfall of Jihadi Jan and his army of jihadists. Because in the Quran, it is written that it is expressly forbidden to burn anybody. If the Islamic State still had any Muslim supporters, the burning of a hostage forced them to open their eyes and realized that ISIS did not truly support Islam and that they were nothing but a terrorist gang with a thirst for blood and violence. After this video, Jihadi John appeared to step back

as the face of ISIS propaganda videos. But intelligence already had an idea of who he was. As it turned out, the man behind the Jihadi John moniker had been known by intelligence forces in the world for almost a decade, and his name was Muhammad M. Wazi. In fact, it was a crucial discovery in the summer of 2014 by intelligence agencies that led to his eventual outsting and demise. Apparently, for some reason,

Muhammad himself had used a student code from one of his courses at Westminster University for a free trial of computer software. However, this login came not from England, but from the heart of Syria. And once intelligence communities had a suspect, they really dug in and began the process of fully identifying him so that he could be persecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And say what you want about the CIA and U.S. based intelligence agencies, but what we will say is that if they want to find or identify

someone, they will be able to, and quickly, to boot. So on February 26, 2015, U.S. intelligence confirmed that Jihadi John was in fact Muhammad M. Wazi after employing a variety of techniques, including voice analysis and interviewing released hostages. And this was explosive news. Headlines were suddenly splattered all across every news publication, and the Mwazi family was thrust into the spotlight. But this was incredibly shocking news to them. Family friends and people who had been close to Muhammad were absolutely flabbergasted to learn that the person they had known as being a friendly, quiet, and calm man was responsible for the brutal public executions of multiple ISIS hostages. But some of Muhammad's friends in London already knew that he was jihadi John and had been able to identify him simply from the first video uploaded by ISIS. These individuals blamed the United Kingdom for essentially creating the ghastly figure that was.

jihadi John by destroying his life piece by peace and not allowing him to leave London to return to his fiance in Kuwait in the days weeks and months following the release of his identity Muhammad's family was interrogated and their lives were then turned upside down I'm back Obama and I'm back because of until now he's been known as Jihad John but the Washington Post says his real name is Mohammed Mwazi a British national born in Kuwait you Obama have yet again through your action. The Post is reporting that the masked man

featured in several gruesome IS beheading videos grew up in a well-to-do middle-class family in West London and graduated from college with a degree in computer programming. Back off and leave our people alone. The paper says Friends of Emwazi claim he started to become radicalized after graduating from college and that he occasionally attended a mosque in southeast London. We, by Allah's grace, are Islamic caliphate.

UK police are declining to comment on the report. saying they won't confirm the identity of anyone in an ongoing counterterrorism investigation. The Post says counterterrorism officials detained Amwazi in 2010, fingerprinting him and searching his belongings, but then letting him go. He's believed to have personally carried out the beheadings of hostages, including Americans in Britons. Muhammad's father denied that his son was the ISIS executioner during a press conference. However, it was later reported that he said if his son,

son was the man in the videos, then he, quote, should be hunted down like a dog. By now, Mohammed Mwazi's cover was blown. Everyone knew his name, where he was from, where he went to school, and his troubled background. And because of this, ISIS decided to pull him back from the front lines of their propaganda campaign. And Jihadi John went into hiding. The former head of counterterrorism, Richard Barrett, said, quote, He has been very quiet since the exposure of his identity. By having the face beneath identified, he has lost his power and became an ordinary loser.

I expect he is still in Syria. And you see, throughout this bloodshed, the chaos, the murder and torture, ISIS really hadn't accomplished anything. Sure, they managed to terrorize those that were under their control. Ensure the videos and headlines that stemmed from their crimes disturbed. the people, but instead of getting what they wanted from the U.S. and other countries, which was essentially a ceasefire against them, they actually galvanized not only the politicians of countries like the United States and England, but the people living in them as well. The majority of the public had grown to hate ISIS and anything and anyone associated with it.

So when Barack Obama announced that for the first time in September of 2014, he had lifted airstrike restrictions and was going to strike ISIS where it hurt. Everyone cheered. The people were supportive. And now everyone wanted jihadi John's head on a stick. And soon they would have it. Before long, Muhammad Mwazi was the most wanted terrorist on earth. And intelligence agencies worked around the clock to determine his whereabouts.

And Muhammad himself knew that if he was to evade capture, he would have to go to a location and surround himself with regular civilians in a place like Raqa, a city that, at the time, was the head of the Islamic State and fully under ISIS control. It was later determined that while he was in Syria, Muhammad had married a local woman and had a son with her. It had been the only thing he had wanted his entire life to have a family, and it was this family that would ultimately lead to his death. After receiving word that Muhammad and Wazi was living in Raqa, a Raqa-based agent working for intelligence gave officials,

in Washington, D.C., the location of Muhammad's wife's address. Her home was located near an Islamic state media center, a location where Muhammad was known to spend a lot of time. And so, knowing that they had locked in on a potential target, the United States and England sat on their information and waited, and waited, and waited until they got confirmation that a strike launched would completely wipe Jihadi John off the face of the earth. And soon enough, they would get that confirmation. On November 12, 2015, at 1141 p.m., Muhammad left his wife's apartment and got into a pickup truck with another known terrorist, knowing this might be their only chance to neutralize their target, an American predator drone, and multiple reconnaissance drones were sent into the airspace above Raka.

Muhammad was tracked as traveling in the pickup truck around the streets of Raka, and he eventually parked in an open area that, ironically, was previously used for public ISIS executions. Shortly before midnight, Muhammad was seen getting out of the truck, and at that point, the drones locked in on his location. For a few moments, out in the nighttime air, Jihadi John, or Muhammad Mwazi, drew his final breaths. It was a quiet night. Yes, he had a lot to do that evening, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary to him.

As he glanced up at the stars that night, he couldn't help but notice how bright they were. And as Muhammad took a glance up at the sky, he had no idea that retrobeautrable. was heading his way at almost 995 miles per hour. As soon as they locked onto their target, the signal had been given. The Hellfire missile had been released from the Predator drone, and everything within a 70-yard radius had been completely obliterated. U.S. officials later said the hit was a flawless strike, and that they were 99% sure they got them.

They also savagely claimed that Jihadi John had been, quote, evaporated, end quote. It's breaking news out of the Pentagon overnight. This is big. A US airstrike in Syria against the notorious ISIS executioner seen in numerous propaganda videos, Jihadi John. Let's get right to NBC's Kier Simmons on the story. Kier, good morning. Savannah, good morning.

There is no definitive proof yet that Jihadi John was killed. One senior US official tells NBC news, while another says, while he was targeted not out of vengeance, but to demonstrate to ISIS, there is a counter- His voice is infamous, hooded and holding a knife in horrific hostage videos. Jihadijan, real name Mohammed Mwazi, was the frontman for a string of ISIS killings. Now, reports not yet confirmed by the Pentagon, says he has been killed by a U.S. drone overnight. A senior U.S. official confirmed the strike. On Twitter, an activist group from the ISIS stronghold of Raqa, reporting the death of Jihadijan in a drone strike.

in a drone strike. His high profile victims included American journalists, James Foley and Steven Sotloff. Stephen's mother says she's waiting for news. If they got him, great, she tells NBC News. But it doesn't bring my son back. American aid worker Peter Kasich, who became known as Abdul Rahman while a hostage, was another victim.

Kuwait-born Mohammed Amwazi was a British citizen, a computer science graduate turned gang member, seen here wearing a Pittsburgh Pirates cap. The team called that sickening. Freed hostages described him as sadistic. One of four British ISIS guards, they called the Beatles. Jihadi John was the leader. An early recruit to ISIS, the jihadist group

whose reach now extends from Syria and northern Iraq to North Africa. The strike targeting Jihadi John comes shortly after the latest ISIS attack in Lebanon, where at least 43 people died last night in a double suicide bombing. Jihadis John's family all now live here in London, under no comment from their lawyer this morning,

but the British Prime Minister just spoke calling Jihadi John the ISIS lead executioner and saying if he has been killed by the US manned savannah, it was an act of self-defense. And thus, the reign of terror that Jihadi John thought he had enacted upon the Western world had been brought to an end. But although Jihadi John is dead, as well as all of the other powerful terrorists, including the likes of Osama bin Laden,

the Islamic State still continues to carry out horrendous acts of terrorism. El Shafi El Shik and Alexander Cody, two British citizens who joined ISIS with Mohammed and Wazi, were also eventually captured and sentenced to life in prison for their roles in the execution of American hostages, including James Foley, Stephen Sautloff, Peter Kasig, and Kayla Mueller. Kayla Mueller was the only victim not executed on video, but it was reported that she was forced into slavery after her capture

and raped multiple times by ISIS leaders before she was brutally murdered. Jihadi John's death serves as a brutal reminder of the complexities and ongoing threat brought forth by extremist ideologies. The rise of the internet has given a platform to extremist groups such as ISIS to distribute their propaganda, recruit new members, and spread their ideology to a global audience.

Ultimately, Muhammad M. Wazi gave up a good life in Britain and sold his soul to serve a terrorist organization. And that decision ultimately led to his death. He will forever be known as an international villain, the bad guy of a production played out on a global stage. However, despite there no longer being a jihadi John, ISIS has already replaced their masked executioner with a new man. A video uploaded on January 3, 2016, showed an English-speaking fighter pointing a gun at the camera

and threatening more violence in the near future. In a familiar black mask and menacing tone, he stands behind five hostages who are on their knees. With a British accent, he aims his wrath at Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron, saying Cameron is arrogant and foolish, like his predecessors. In fact, David, you are more of an imbecile. Only an imbecile would dare to wage war against a land where the law of Allah reigns supreme. Seconds later, this militant and others appear to shoot the hostages in the back of the head. The men had been accused of spying for the British.

This is ISIS's latest propaganda video. And if this man bears a chilling resemblance to Jihadi John, analysts say there's good reason. Jihadi John created a boogeyman for the West. And now this person, whoever he is, is trying to run. replicate that scary behavior of his predecessor. Jihadi John, the British ISIS militant identified by Western intelligence as Muhammad M. Wazi, terrified Western audiences as he presided

over the beheadings of American James Foley and other hostages. So it's only right, we continue to strike the necks of your people. Jihadi John was killed in November in a drone strike in the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa Syria. Analysts say ISIS is trying to recapture his gravitas, but the group also tends to post-a-enacted. post these videos when it's on the ropes.

I think the timing of the video clearly has to do with recent battlefield losses. They lost Ramadi, their territory is being pushed back, their ability to make money from oil in particular is being constrained like it hadn't been before. A US intelligence official tells CNN, ISIS's use of murderers as spokesman only reflects the group's true nature. From David Cameron, a defiant response. It's desperate stuff from an organization that really does do the most utterly despicable and ghastly acts. And people can see that again today.

CNN is told British counterterror officials are combing through the video. British officials won't comment on who this militant might be. But experts say he's likely on their kill list. They are absolutely looking for this person right now. If you're willing to make a high-resolution video executing hostages, the United States, Britain and other folks are looking for you. But this mask, jihadist, isn't the only person in this video generating significant interest in Great Britain. At the end of the video, a young boy who looks to be only about four or five years old,

appears unmasked in fatigues and speaks in a British accent, threatening to kill non-believers in the West. A British man identifying himself as the boy's grandfather spoke to Britain's Channel 4. This grandfather says his daughter, the boy's mother, converted to Islam, moved to Syria, and married a jihadist who's now believed to have been killed. He says ISIS is using the boy as propaganda, and as a shield, he adds, quote, I can't disown him. He's my grandson. And as we know now, ISIS still has the ability to rear its ugly head. Just take a look at the recent terrorist attack in Russia,

perpetrated by ISIS-K, the Afghan branch of the Islamic State, that claimed the lives of 145 individuals and injured a further 551 people. They are still out there, and their extremist ideologies haven't gotten any softer. It is also unfortunate that ISIS continues to use innocent, vulnerable children for propaganda, recruitment, and acts of violence, including suicide bombings and human shields. In fact, there's a video that ISIS released that shows children running throughout an abandoned building, brandishing rifles and shooting grown men directly in the skull. That's right, in the video, children are proudly shooting and killing adults.

It's really just truly twisted, sickening stuff. And it just shows you how cruel and ruthless that ISIS is as an organization and how far they are willing to go to promote their extremist ideology, just how much they're willing to do to spread fear and violence. And as Robert Verkayek chillingly said, Muhammad M. Wazi may have been killed. But jihadi John can be replaced. Hey, everybody.

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of murder in America. A couple big things. I wrote this episode. I was really the one who wanted to tell the story. And I think we were really able to do it justice. I hope you guys enjoyed how we told this story. I vividly remember all of this stuff happening. I was in high school at the time.

And just seeing those images of jihadi John with all of the hostages, the various people that he murdered up on the TV screens. I mean, it's just stuff that's burned into my mind. I mean, scary, scary stuff, but he got what was coming to him in the end. Also, this week, we are the number four biggest true crime podcast in America on Spotify. We're trying to boost our listeners on Apple, but we're also the ninth largest podcast in America on Spotify. So thank you guys. Courtney and I were just on Times Square. We had a billboard there.

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