FBI says ISIS leader ‘Jihadi John’ from videos, but doesn’t name Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary
The FBI believes it has identified the masked Islamic State militant responsible for beheading Westerners in ISIS videos, but law enforcement will not reveal the identity of the man known only as “Jihadi John,” agency director James Comey told reporters.
“I believe that we have identified him, I’m not going to tell you who I believe it is,” Comey said. He also declined to detail the militant’s nationality, despite the fact that the man speaks with a British accent ‒ likely from the London area, according to The Wire, which called the news “a major step to taking down the terrorist network.”
Jihadi John first appeared in a graphic video depicting the beheading of American photojournalist James Wright Foley and then in the executions of Steven Sotloff and the British hostage David Haines.
The converted Sunni extremist with the British accent is widely believed to be a Muslim militant from London. British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said earlier in the week that investigators seeking to identify Jihadi John were “getting warm.”
The FBI and other counterintelligence agencies may have used Jihadi John’s eyes – the only part of him not covered in the Foley video – to create a portrait of the man underneath the mask, ABC News reported.
Forensic officials, in consultation with the US government, created both a cleanshaven and a moustached likeness of the man. Other experts are using the size and movement of shadows, as well as rock formations, plants and other geographical landmarks to decipher where and when exactly Foley was murdered.
Jihadi John has already been identified by several Brit papers (and online sources) as Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, a 23-year-old failed rapper who left London and joined the radical ISIS militants last year.
Last week, his father, Adel Abdel Bary, 54, tearfully pleaded guilty in Manhattan Federal Court to conspiring to kill Americans and having a role in 1998 Al Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that left 224 dead.
Jihadi John is one of hundreds of British Muslims who have joined the ranks of ISIS, a murderous Sunni Muslim organization bent on carving out a caliphate in Syria and Iraq.
Foreign captives who managed to escape from the clutches of ISIS said Jihadi John is part of a trio of brutes who they dubbed the “Killer Beatles” because of their English accents.
The other terrorist have been identified by British publications as Razul Islam, 21, and Aine Davis, 30 — names U.S. and British officials haven’t confirmed.
