Prime Minister David Cameron has ordered Britian’s intelligence network and special forces to redouble their efforts to kill or capture a London-born IS terrorist referred to as ‘Jihadi John’, days after he warned to return to the UK to continue “cutting off heads”.
Mohammed Emwazi, who showed his face over the weekend in a new video to warn about his plans to return to Britain to carry out killings on behalf of IS, is now believed to be a priority for MI6.
According to the ‘Daily Mirror’, Cameron wants Britain’s spies to kill or capture the 27-year-old computer programmer turned executioner behind the beheading of British hostages in Syria.
“In almost daily meetings now Cameron first asks what is the latest on the hunt for this Jihadi John character and he has made his feelings known. Months ago intelligence chiefs said they believed they would track down the terrorist and there have been some leads,” a military source told the newspaper.
“They were waiting for him to go on the move and break cover. Usually these people are discovered by not observing the usual rules in trying to avoid detection. But this guy has proved very elusive. It is thought that he has been on the move and may have even travelled to a different country from Syria but he has used the chaos of the area to get past the authorities,” he added.
Britain’s intelligence and other special forces have been on the trail of IS forces in Iraq, Syria and even Libya in the last few months on top secret missions.
Scores of top IS fighters have reportedly been killed as a result of their work in the Middle East.
In February this year, Cameron had said: “When there are people anywhere in the world who commit appalling and heinous crimes against British citizens, we will do everything we can, with the police, with the security services, with all that we have at our disposal, to find these people and put them out of action.
“That is the number one priority for me.”
MI6 has recruited a vast network of agents in Syria, Iraq and Jordan to combat the IS threat.
They are also liaising with the French DGSE spy agency, which has also infiltrated the region and now an unprecedented number of recruited Arab undercover agents have joined the hunt.
It is the most concentrated number of elite spooks and military men and women Britain is believed to have deployed in one region for many years.