The first footage of ISIS executioner Jihadi John as a shy teenage schoolboy has emerged. The video shows Mohammed Emwazi, identified last week as the Islamist fanatic filmed beheading hostages in Syria, being chosen by a classmate to join in with a game of lunchtime football.
The previously-unseen footage was filmed 11 years ago at Qunitin Kynaston Academy, the secondary school in St John’s Wood, north London, where Emwazi was educated.
The friendly kickabout is the first moving image to have been obtained of Emwazi before he became the ISIS’s depraved executioner-in-chief.
In the film, obtained by Channel 4 News, the ‘football mad’ teenager, thought to be around 15 at the time, is the second person to be chosen for the team.
One of his fellow pupils can be clearly heard shouting ‘Emwazi’, beckoning over the future jihadi.
But he also appears to be painfully shy, instantly raising his arm to cover his face when he knew the camera was focusing on him.
Channel 4 News said Emwazi had been identified in the video by two different people that he knew at the time.
The footage, filmed in May 2004, was broadcast this evening, after it emerged that the executioner had dumped two schoolboys on the M1 motorway at gunpoint in revenge for an attack on his brother.
According to a former friend of his brother Omar, Emwazi and two bearded associates abducted two gang members in 2008, while he was living on the notorious Mozart estate in west London.
After viewing the footage, Diane Foley, the mother of American journalist James Foley, told Jon Snow it was ‘frightening’ that a ‘promising young person who had many gifts’ could use his talents for ‘such evil’.
She said: ‘It’s very frightening he would end up filled with such hate. That’s very disturbing to me that young people would be attracted to such hate?’
She added that the fact Jihadi John had been identified did not help to bring her closure.
She said: ‘If it had not been that young man, then I’m afraid it would have been someone else. I think it’s tragic for that young man and his family – it’s just so sad and we must do more to protect our young people from the lies that have instilled so much hate and brutality.’
Since being identified, Emwazi has emerged as a fun-loving young boy, who adored The Simpsons, Playstation games and eating chips.
He was also said to have wanted to become a Premier League star, scoring goals for Manchester United by the age of 30.
In a handwritten entry in his primary school yearbook, the Kuwaiti-born British citizen, who moved to the UK aged six, wrote: ‘What I want to be when I grow up is a footballer’.
The entries showed no sign he would go on to become the world’s most wanted man, who is believed to have beheaded a string of hostages in the name of Islam.
But, a decade later, Emwazi had shunned British life and was a ‘known wolf’ to MI5, having already taken the path towards becoming ISIS’ most notorious murderer.
In a chilling twist, in a school yearbook from when he was 10, Emwazi lists his favourite computer game as shooting game ‘Duke Nukem: Time To Kill’ and his favourite book as ‘How To Kill A Monster’ from the popular children’s Goosebumps series.
He also lists his favourite band as pop group S Club 7, and when asked what he wants to be when he is 30, writes: ‘I will be in a football team and scoring a goal.’
Emwazi also listed his favourite colour as blue, his favourite animal as a monkey, his favourite cartoon as The Simpsons and chips as his favourite food.
Earlier this week, it emerged Emwazi was bullied as a schoolboy at the school in which the film was made.
Former headteacher Jo Shuter told Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘He had adolescent issues. Particularly at that age, for the boys, it is a time when the hormones start raging, and he had some issues with being bullied which we dealt with.
‘By the time he got into the sixth-form he was, to all intents and purposes, a hard-working aspirational young man who went on to the university that he wanted to go to.’
After arriving in Britain when he was six years old, the extremist appeared to embrace British life, playing football in the affluent streets of West London while supporting Manchester United.
He had moved to Britain in 1993, settling in the north-west London suburbs of Maida Vale and Queens Park.
Neighbours recalled a polite, quietly spoken boy who was studious at his Church of England school, where he was the only Muslim pupil in his class.
He went to mosque with his family, who spoke Arabic to each other, but wore Western clothing and became popular with his British classmates at St Mary Magdalene Church of England primary school in Maida Vale, West London.
He was also described as ‘calm and decent’ and ‘the best employee we ever had’ by an IT firm for whom he worked in Kuwait.
But, at some point during his lifetime, Emwazi was radicalised and was soon on the radar of MI5.
It emerged today that the Home Office could face fresh questions over border controls after it is thought that Emwazi used a well-worn route to leave the UK.
The 26-year-old a university graduate from Queen’s Park, London, was able to flee to Syria despite being on an MI5 watchlist and being monitored by Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command.
He had been watched by the services since May 2009, when it is thought he tried to reach Somalia to join Islamist terror group al-Shabaab.
Emwazi flew to Tanzania with friends apparently on a safari – but was arrested by police upon landing in Dar es Salaam and sent back to Britain.
En route he stopped in Amsterdam, where he claimed to have been accused by an MI5 officer of trying to reach Somalia, home of the militant group Al Shabaab.
Emwazi claimed to have been harassed and intimidated by security services – and even complained to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
He alleged an agent from MI5 knew ‘everything about me; where I lived, what I did, and the people I hanged around with’ and claimed the organisation attempted to ‘turn’ him to work for them.
Mailonline
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