Story highlights
- U.S. forces targeted "Jihadi John" in an airstrike in Raqqa, Syria, the Pentagon announced Thursday night
- It was not immediately clear whether the strike was successful
Washington (CNN)[Breaking news update 5:35 a.m. ET]
The British Prime Minister David Cameron called the air strike an "act of self defense" and said "It was the right thing to do."
"If
this strike was successful and we're still awaiting confirmation of
that, it will be a strike at the heart of ISIS," Cameron said.
[Last update posted at 5:22 a.m. ET]
"Jihadi John," the jeering, sadistic masked mouthpiece of ISIS, may have been killed in a coalition airstrike in Raqqa, Syria.
While
the Pentagon, in announcing the strike Thursday night, wouldn't
definitely say Mohammed Emwazi was dead, U.S. officials said authorities
are confident he was.
This was a
mission of "persistent surveillance," a senior U.S. official said,
adding that authorities knew it was Emwazi when they took the shot.
Another U.S. official told CNN that Emwazi was in a vehicle at the time of the strike, which was launched from a drone.
A most wanted man
Emwazi, a British citizen, was a most wanted man.
As
the masked face of ISIS, he appeared in a series of brutal execution
videos, dressed head-to-toe in black and holding a knife.
He
took part in the murders of U.S. journalists Steven Sotloff and James
Foley, U.S. aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, British aid workers David
Haines and Alan Henning, Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, and a number of
other hostages, the Pentagon said.
The Ramadhan Foundation, a Muslim organization in the UK, said Emwazi was the manifestation of the evil.
"The
killing of Mohammed Emwaz in Syria is a significant moment in the fight
to get justice for David Haines, Alan Henning and all the victims of
this evil man," said Mohammed Shafiq, the group's executive director.
The strike
The strike appeared to have taken place Friday in Syria (Thursday night in the U.S.).
Syrian
activists in Raqqa reported that four ISIS foreign fighters, including a
leader with British nationality, were killed by coalition airstrike,
the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
British Prime Minister David Cameron was aware of the airstrike, and notified families whose kin was executed by Emwazi.
"Britain
has been working hand in glove with America over the 'Jihadi John'
drone strike, to defeat (ISIS), and to hunt down those murdering
hostages," Cameron's office said. "The Prime Minister has said before
that tracking down these brutal murderers was a top priority."
A frequent video presence
Emwazi,
who speaks English and is believed to be born in Kuwait, was frequently
seen in hooded hostage videos carrying out violent beheadings.
For periods at a time this year, Emwazi was not seen in hostage videos, though U.S. officials told CNN in July that they had learned that he was alive and hiding near Raqqa.
Analysts
describe him as grotesque and fond of sadistic torture techniques, with
one former hostage recounting last month how his captor made him dance the tango with him.
Friends of Emwazi said they believed he started down the road to
radicalization when he traveled to the east African nation of Tanzania
in 2009, the Washington Post reported this year.
He was supposed to be going on safari but he was reportedly detained
on arrival, held overnight and then deported. He was also detained by
counterterrorism officials in Britain in 2010, the Post said.
Authorities have not disclosed the reasons for those reported detentions.
The Washington Post's report includes emails Emwazi purportedly wrote
after British counterterrorism officials detained him and stopped him
from flying to Kuwait.
"I had a job waiting for me and marriage to get started," he wrote in a June 2010 email to Qureshi, the Post reported.
But
now "I feel like a prisoner, only not in a cage, in London. A person
imprisoned & controlled by security service men, stopping me from
living my new life in my birthplace & country, Kuwait," the email
said.
Some terrorism experts said he was on a path toward extremism years before that incident.
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