LONDON // The man who became the ISIL militant known as “Jihadi John” was a relatively hardworking student who showed no signs of being radicalised, his former school principal said on Monday.
Jo Shuter, former headteacher at Quintin Kynaston Academy in London, said that Mohammed Emwazi was an “aspirational young man” when she knew him as a teenager.
“He was quiet, he was reasonably hardworking,” Ms Shuter said.
Emwazi had “adolescent issues” and was bullied at school, she said, but he eventually settled down and did well enough academically to be admitted to the university that was his first choice.
“I can’t stress enough, he wasn’t a huge concern to us,” she added.
Emwazi was revealed last week to be the masked ISIL militant known as “Jihadi John” who appears in several online beheading videos brandishing a large knife. He is believed to be responsible for beheading at least five Western hostages.
Authorities are working to understand how he became radicalised.
Born in Kuwait, Emwazi came to Britain as a small child, attending state schools in London before studying computer science at the University of Westminster. He left for Syria in 2013.
He was interrogated by security services while in Britain but was never arrested or charged.
Ms Shuter said neither Emwazi nor other students showed signs of embracing radical causes while at school.
Two other former students from the same school were also thought to have gone to fight in Syria and Somalia.
Also on Monday, two members of Kuwait’s so-called “stateless” community said that Emwazi was born to an undocumented family in an impoverished part of the country. He left Kuwait for Britain when he was only a boy.
One of the sources, a family acquaintance named Tareq, described Emwazi as a polite young man, almost timid in nature.
Both Tareq and Abdul Hakeem Al Fadhli, an activist for the undocumented community’s rights, said Emwazi’s family lived in the rundown Taima area of Jahra, a city on the outskirts of Kuwait City.
They said the militant’s family members in Kuwait had been instructed by authorities not to speak to the media.
Meanwhile, a UK-based human rights group that was in contact with Emwazi before he left Britain for Syria was facing a backlash on Monday after accusing intelligence services of radicalising him.
Cage, whose leading figures include former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg, describes its work as supporting people arrested or raided as a result of the “war on terror” following the September 11 attacks in 2001.
When Emwazi was identified by the Washington Post as "Jihadi John" last week, Cage held a press conference on Thursday at which its research director Asim Qureshi described him as a "beautiful young man" and blamed British intelligence for radicalising him.
The group claimed that MI5 had been tracking Emwazi since at least 2009 and had even tried to recruit him.
Emwazi had complained of harassment between 2009 and 2012, had been stopped from going on a safari trip and prevented from pursuing a job and a marriage in Kuwait, Cage said.
“There are several young Britons whose lives were not only ruined by security agencies, but who became disenfranchised and turned to violence because of British counter-terrorism policies coupled with long-standing grievances over Western foreign policy,” Mr Qureshi said in a separate statement.
The group’s comments prompted a furious response throughout British politics and the media, with many arguing that Emwazi was the only person accountable for his own actions.
The group’s views were dismissed as “reprehensible” by the office of British prime minister David Cameron, “very false” by a former head of MI6 and an “apology for terror” by London mayor Boris Johnson.
Amnesty International, which has in the past jointly called for an investigation of British involvement in the CIA’s controversial rendition programme with Cage and other bodies, has also spoken out.
“I can’t condemn strongly enough anybody in any context who seeks to find some justifications somehow for why you can kill a civilian,” said Steve Crawshaw, director of the office of Amnesty’s secretary general.
But despite the backlash, others have defended Cage, including leading human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith who described the group’s work as “vital”.
* Associated Press and Agence France-Presse
