An ISIS executioner dubbed Jihadi John was holding a kebab when he was gunned down by a British-led drone, a mission chief has said.
The ISIS fighter, who was identified by GCHQ analysts as Mohammed Emwazi, was traced to a takeaway by MI6 in 2015.
Intelligence agency bosses waited until a young boy who was with him left the area before ordering the strike in Raqqa, Syria.
The Hellfire missile was nearly aborted when the boy had come back, however he was blocked by vehicles.
A military official said the operation was led by USAF and RAF drone specialists in Qatar, while being supported by agents in Syria.
They explained that they had been following Emwazi for six weeks, determining his pattern of visiting a building near his mosque.
He would then arrive in a four-by-four truck and stay for around three to four minutes, they added.
‘The team asked MI6 about the building and it came back that it was a kebab shop,’ they told The Sun.
‘One day he walked out of the kebab shop there and the boy ran off to play football. It was our chance,’ they added. ‘Emwazi was evaporated, kebab in hand.’
Kuwait-born Emwazi joined a terror cell alongside three other Brits who were called the IS Beatles. They executed at least 29 hostages – one being aid worker David Haines.
Emwazi arrived in Britain when he was six years old and appeared to embrace British life, playing football in the affluent streets of west London and supporting Manchester United.
Neighbours said he was a polite, quietly spoken, shy boy who was studious at his Church of England school, where he was the only Muslim pupil in his class.
He was also reportedly bullied at his secondary school, Quintin Kynaston School, in St John’s Wood, north London, for having bad breath.
It was only after he won a place to study computing and business management at the University of Westminster that his behaviour began to change.
The university has since been linked with several proponents of radical Islam, and Emwazi appeared to have fallen under their sway.
He began attending different mosques and was known to associate with Bilal al-Berjawi, who was killed by a drone strike in Somalia in 2012.
In August 2009, after his graduation, Emwazi flew to Tanzania in East Africa with friends and told authorities they were going on a wildlife safari.
But the group was refused entry and put on a plane to the Netherlands, where Emwazi later claimed he was questioned by an MI5 agent called ‘Nick’.
Emwazi’s hatred of the West stemmed from the perceived injustice of how he was dealt with by MI5 and Scotland Yard.
In August 2014, the terrorist was seen beheading American journalist, James Foley, in scenes that shocked the world
Emwazi posted two more clips of brutal beheading, the first of another American journalist – Steven Sotloff – and the other of British aid worker David Haines.
As well as Haines, Foley and Sotloff, the gang’s victims also included Americans Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller.
Robert Hannigan, a former director of GCHQ, the British signals intelligence agency, said it was Emwazi’s voice and his British accent that was key to unveiling his identity.
In 2019, he told the documentary: ‘We had a race to find out who he was – his size, his hands, but, above all, his voice, made identifying him quite easy.’
Emwazi reportedly used very strong encryption and virtual private networks to communicate and wiped every computer he sent or received messages from to safeguard them from bugs.
He also regularly surrounded himself with women and children to make a drone attack likely to result in civilian deaths.
Details about his death come as his accomplice, El Shafee Elsheikh – known as Jihadi Ringo – applied to move back to his ‘home country’ Britain so he can be closer to family and friends.
Bethany, the daughter of David Haines, called Elsheikh’s bid to move prisons an ‘outrageous insult’.
Elsheikh was born in Sudan and grew up in London but had his British citizenship revoked in 2018. For his crimes, he was tried by a federal jury in Virginia and handed eight life sentences.
He has now applied to be switched from his Colorado prison to a UK jail under the International Prisoner Transfer Program, claiming he would like to be closer to family and friends, The Sun reports.
Families of the victims fear Elsheikh could be moved to somewhere like London’s Belmarsh, where convicts have access to a number of luxuries like TVs and games consoles and can mix with other extremists.
US President Donald Trump’s Deputy Assistant Sebastian Gorka recently called for the UK to honour a ‘commitment’ to take back IS Brits.
Bethany, 28, from Perthshire, also recently raised fears that a second member of The Beatles terror cell, Alexanda Kotey, will attempt to follow the lead of Elsheik and apply to move to a UK jail.
