A digital magazine associated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group has released a eulogy for “Jihadi John”, a member of the group who won global notoriety for his filmed executions of hostages.
The fighter, who was identified as Mohammed Emwazi, was described in ISIL’s Dabiq magazine by his nickname in the group of “Abu Muharib al-Muhajir”.
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The US military said in November it was “reasonably certain” it had killed him in a drone strike.
In a briefing Colonel Steve Warren said it would take time for formal confirmation that the air strike killed Emwazi. But Warren added that the US had “great confidence that this individual was Jihadi John”.
He said: “We know for a fact that the weapons system hit its intended target, and that the personnel who were on the receiving end of that weapons system were in fact killed”.
Emwazi appeared in ISIL videos showing the killings of journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, US aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, and a number of other hostages.
Emwazi, a computer programmer from London, was born in Kuwait to a stateless family of Iraqi origin.
His parents moved to Britain in 1993, after their hopes of obtaining Kuwaiti citizenship were quashed.