How drones killed Jihadi John

Mohammed Emwazi was killed by a missile fired from a Reaper drone over Raqqa in Syria. Photo / File

Missile was going at such speed Emwazi would have known nothing before it hit.

For Jihadi John, death could not have been more different than for his victims. While his hostages suffered unimaginable horror as he beheaded them, for him the end came instantaneously.

British and US intelligence agencies had, for more than a year, been trying to gain live information on the whereabouts of the masked man whose first victim, American journalist James Foley, was murdered in a video posted on YouTube in August last year.

Their efforts finally paid off shortly before midnight on Thursday (local time) when intelligence pinpointed the jihadist to a car in the centre of Raqqa, Syria, within a short walk of Isis headquarters in the city's old governorate building.

Mohammed Emwazi - his name was finally confirmed by British Prime Minister David Cameron for the first time yesterday - is understood to have been located by either MI6 or GCHQ, either through a human source on the ground or by monitoring his communications. The intelligence was passed on to the Pentagon, enabling the operators of an armed Reaper drone in the sky above Raqqa to spot the car in which he was travelling.

At 11.40pm the order to kill was passed to the drone operators based at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada controlling aircraft launched from a base in Iraq.

Controlling their drone via a satellite link, and using a second Reaper as a "spotter" aircraft, they selected their target and released a Hellfire missile from 3000m. Experts say the Reaper may have been several miles away, invisible in the night sky. Its missile, travelling at Mach 1.3 (1601km/h), arrived at such speed that Emwazi would have known nothing before it struck. At 11.51pm, the car and its four occupants were blown to pieces.

The result was described by a US official as a "flawless" strike, a "clean hit" that "evaporated" Emwazi, with no collateral damage.

The Pentagon disclosed that a British drone was also involved in providing extra "eyes in the sky".

Unconfirmed reports suggested one of the others killed was another of the four British jihadists nicknamed "The Beatles" by their captives because of their English accents. Emwazi, 27, was given his nickname after John Lennon.

Emwazi's death was doubly symbolic. Not only was Isis' main propaganda tool neutralised, but the strike was within sight of two of the locations most strongly identified with the terrorist group. The missile strike happened in or next to Clocktower Square, the roundabout where Isis carries out public executions.

In 2012, it was the location of protests against Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, as a popular uprising spread across the country. But by the following year, Isis had seized control.

The hunt for Emwazi began at the end of 2012, when security services first suspected he was in Syria. He had been reported missing by his family in August of that year, having left the family home in Queen's Park, north London, and lied about where he was going.

Jihadi John became a top priority for MI6 after his video of Foley's beheading, titled A Message to America, was posted online last year.

The first step was to identify the masked figure in the footage. With only his eyes visible, intelligence officers on both sides of the Atlantic examined other clues, primarily his voice and accent, but also his skin colour, height, physique and the vein patterns on his hands. By September last year, his identity was known to Britain and the US.

Mixed feelings for family of terrorist's victims

Mohammed Emwazi aka Jihadi John. Photo / supplied

The widow of beheaded hostage David Haines said the killing of Emwazi brought her no relief as she wanted to "look him in the eyes" in a court of law.
The British aid worker's wife, Dragana, 45, said her husband's killer "didn't deserve to die so easily".

Haines' daughter Bethany Haines, 18, told ITV News she felt "an instant sense of relief", adding she would only have had closure "once there's a bullet between his eyes".
Emwazi made his first appearance as masked executioner Jihadi John in August last year for the filmed beheading of US journalist James Foley.

Foley's parents, John and Diane, said: "If only so much effort had been given to finding and rescuing Jim and the other hostages who were subsequently murdered by Isis, they might be alive today."

Shirley Sotloff, mother of beheaded American journalist Steven Sotloff, 31, told NBC News: "If they got him, great. But it doesn't bring my son back."

The month after Haines' death, a film was released depicting the murder of Alan Henning, a 47-year-old taxi driver from Manchester.

His brother, Reg Henning, told ITV News: "Hopefully, this is the end of it. I am glad he is dead. I would have preferred him to face justice. If they had arrested him and gone to court, it would have dragged on for months."

Henning's daughter Lucy, 18, said she learned of her father's death after seeing a gruesome photograph of his body on Instagram.

"As much as I wanted [Emwazi] dead, I also wanted answers as to why he did it, why my dad? How did it make a difference?"

Junko Ishido, the mother of Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, told the news organisation NHK: "I only wish there will be no more conflicts like these in this world, as my son had hoped to see peace prevail."