Anger as terrorism suspect linked to Jihadi John used Human Rights Act to stay in the UK

This is the Sunday Telegraph, and it continues the information in the Guardian report earlier this evening.

An Al-Qaeda terrorism suspect closely connected to “Jihadi John” is living in London, having used the Human Rights Act to prevent the Government from deporting him. Court papers obtained by The Sunday Telegraph disclose that the man is at the centre of a terror network that included his friend and associate Mohammed Emwazi, who last week was unmasked as “Jihadi John”.

The legal documents show how the suspect, originally from Ethiopia, has resisted deportation despite being a leading member of al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda affiliate based in Somalia and responsible for a series of terrorist atrocities.

In a series of further developments following the disclosure of Jihadi John’s identity, it can also be revealed that:

•?A second boy from Quintin Kynaston academy, the northwest London school that Emwazi attended, died fighting with terrorists abroad. Choukri Ellekhlifi was killed fighting for an al-Qaeda-affiliated terror group in Syria in 2013

•?The academy was last night facing a government inquiry

•?Emwazi was recruited by two of the world’s most notorious terrorists while on a holiday in Kuwait when he was just 19.

The Government’s inability to deport J1, who was born in Ethiopia, will bolster demands for the Human Rights Act to be scrapped.

The Government’s case against him finally collapsed in the summer after a five-year legal battle when the senior diplomat in charge of trying to deport terrorists conceded that the system was not working.

The court documents involving J1 and another terror suspect, known as CE, a father of two who was born in Iran, detail a large network of jihadists operating in west London in 2011. CE cannot be deported either, having been given British citizenship in 2004.

Emwazi, 26, who would go on to become the world’s most wanted man after the execution of Western hostages in Syria, was four years ago a member of a cell that, according to the authorities, comprised at least 10 other jihadists that security services were keeping under surveillance.

J1 is accused by the Government of being a senior organiser for al-Shabaab. Court papers disclose that “on the morning of the failed London bombings of 21 July 2005, a mobile telephone which the appellant [J1] now accepts was used by him, was in contact with a telephone used by one of the bombers, Hussein Osman”. 

The man, who can, for legal reasons, be identified only as J1, has close links not only to Emwazi but also to a number of other jihadists, including one of the July 21 plotters, who tried to blow up the London Underground in 2005, and two al-Qaeda terrorists subsequently killed in US drone attacks in Somalia.