Jihadi John's schoolfriend recognised eyes of ISIS butcher in beheading videos

UK: A former schoolmate of barbaric Jihadi John now known as Mohammed Emwazi has told of his horror of learning the unmasked killer was his teenage friend.

The 27-year-old, who asked not to be named, spoke of the Islamic State butcher known as Jihadi John who has beheaded at least five western hostages.

He said: “I remember first seeing a photo of Jihadi John posing next to one of his victims.

"He had his face covered and all I could see were his eyes.

“I instantly thought, ‘There’s something really familiar about those eyes.’ It sent a little shiver down my spine.

“Mohammed has very distinctive, dark eyes that are inset deep into his skull."

He added: “Then I saw a story saying that he was the real Jihadi John. I felt physically sick, I still do.

"I couldn’t believe someone I had been so close to had turned so evil.”

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The friend told how he first met Emwazi in 1999 when both attended Quintin Kynaston Secondary School in St John’s Wood, North London.

He said: “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 jokers and he was a normal lad.”

However the friend revealed that he got his first hint that Emwazi harboured extreme views during a Year 9 lesson on Nazi genocide.

He said: “The teacher told us the Nazis drew up plans to get rid of all the Jews.

“I heard Mohammed mutter ‘Good. They deserved it’. I thought he was joking but later he told me that he hated all Jews and blamed them for the plight of Muslims.

“He really meant it. He absolutely hated Jews. If we ever walked past a house in Golders Green that he knew was owned by a Jew he would shout obscenities, calling them names like ‘pigs.”

The school pal said Emwazi’s opinions hardened after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

He added: “He said he 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, that he must have picked them up from somewhere outside school.

“He was an avid Manchester United supporter and loved rap music, particularly Jay-Z. He was actually quite small for his age but full of bravado.

 

“I only ever saw him get into a fight once and that was with an Iranian who joined us to play football one Saturday. Mohammed was punching and kicking this guy, even though he was much bigger.

"I had to step in to stop him being really hurt.”

The former friend said he last saw Emwazi when he had finished his last year in the sixth form.

He added: “Our paths have gone completely different ways, I’m happily settled and have kids. He’s one of the most hated figures in the world. I just don’t know how it happened?”

Posing in a baseball cap for his university enrollment photo, he looks like any other self-confident 18-year-old student.

But by the time this picture was taken Emwazi had already joined a network of Muslim fanatics.

MI5 linked him to Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed, the London-based terror jihadi who in 2013 gave undercover officers the slip disguised as a woman in a burkha.

Before he went to Quintin Kynaston, where he is believed to have studied alongside former X Factor judge and pop star Tulisa Contostavlos, Emwazi was a pupil at St Mary Magdalene Church of England School, West London.

Writing in his school yearbook the 10-year-old, known as Mo to classmates, sounded like any other child. He listed his hobbies as “football, rugby and Playstation” and added that at 30 “I will be in a football team and scoring a goal”.

Today security sources revealed that Emwazi, 26, and burkha disguise jihadi Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed met in 2006 at a West London mosque before Emwazi began a computer programming course at Westminster University.

Court documents show Emwazi was part of a terror fundraising network being monitored from as early as 2007.

But Emwazi is understood to have been recruited to an international terror gang at least a year earlier by Ahmed Mohamed who lived less than two miles from his home in Queen’s Park, West London.

Ahmed Mohammed is understood to have introduced Emwazi to radical texts and other like-minded individuals including Ibrahim Magag, who went on the run from his home in Camden, North London, in 2013.

Astonishingly another British jihadi fighting for IS also lived just a few miles away. Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, 24, one of the gang reportedly guarding IS prisoners, was pictured last August holding the head of an executed Syrian soldier.

But Emwazi’s network spreads even further. A file seen by The Mirror shows a direct link between Ahmed Mohammed and two al-Qaeda killers.

One of the men, Saleh Nabhan, was behind the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 250 and the 2002 attempt to bring down an Israeli airline with Stinger missiles.

Together with Harun Fazul he also trained and guarded British terror suspect Samantha Lewthwaite – the White Widow.

It is understood Ahmed Mohamed was key to recruiting a number of disaffected Muslim men from the streets of London to join al-Shabaab in Somalia.

The East African terror outfit carried out the September 2013 Nairobi mall massacre that left at least 67 dead.

His network also spawned London bombers Muktar Said Ibrahim and Ramzi Mohammed, whose devices failed to explode in 2005 a fortnight after 7/7.

Lee Rigby’s killer Michael Adebolajo is also rumoured to have worshipped at the same mosque at Emwazi in Greenwich, South East London.

Tonight the net was closing in on Emwazi as David Cameron vowed to put the evil killer “out of action”. The PM said avenging the “appalling and heinous” murders was his top priority.

The widow of David Haines, the British aid worker executed by Emwazi, said she wanted him to be caught alive.

Dragana Haines, 44, said the last thing she wants is for her husband’s killer to be allowed an “honourable death”.

“Hopefully he will be caught alive,” she added: “That’s the only moral satisfaction for the families of all the people he murdered."