Drone Strike Kills “Jihadi John”

A U.S. drone strike struck and killed Mohammed “Jihadi John” Emzawi on Nov. 12. The strike was conducted around midnight on Thursday with a Hellfire missile, which hit a vehicle with two passengers, one of whom the Pentagon said they are “reasonably certain” was Emzawi. The vehicle was in the heart of Raqqa, the capital of the self-styled Islamic State (IS), and only a few blocks from the Main Headquarters. Emzawi became known to the West through IS’s widely circulated beheadings of foreigners, including the American journalist James Foley, as well as Japanese citizens Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa. The taped beheadings were used as recruitment propaganda to encourage foreigners to join IS, as well as for monetary gain, exhibited by IS’s demand of $200 million for the release of the two Japanese citizens.

The U.S. and Britain spent over a year collecting information on Emzawi in an attempt to locate and eliminate him. Emzawi, a U.K. citizen of Kuwaiti descent, emigrated to Syria in 2013 from his home in London.

The strike came less than a day before IS conducted a series of organized attacks in Paris, killing over 120 civilians. At this time no links have been made between the strike on Emwazi and the attacks on Friday.