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Open in new tab A Middle East expert has relived the chilling moment he caught a rare glimpse of Jihadi John’s face during a shocking encounter in Syria. Jurgen Todenhofer was fact-finding in a terrorist stronghold when the British ISIS executioner – masked knife-wielding “star” of a series of sickening beheading videos – was assigned to be his driver. The Jihadist – real name Mohammed Emwazi – always hid his face. But when Jurgen, 74, walked into a restaurant with an ISIS commander he came face-to-face with the killer, minus his mask. Jurgen, who was accompanied on the dangerous mission by his son Freddie, said: “I realised Jihadi John was one of our drivers. He was always the masked driver and boss of our commander.
“Later I saw him unmasked in a restaurant and they said I had done it on purpose, that I was trying to find out his identity. I said to the ISIS commander, ‘What the hell, all the other terrorists take off their masks, why is he so special?’ But they didn’t answer. “The fighters had hours and hours of conferences after that about the situation, they would not speak to or sleep or eat with us any more, because I had seen his real face, heard his real voice.” He said swaggering Emwazi, filmed gloating over the brutal beheadings of Britons Alan Henning and David Haines in two videos, had long curly hair, a nose like an eagle’s beak and was “the most unfriendly guy we met there”.
German former judge and politician Jurgen went to the region with his son after Freddie, 31, contacted ISIS online and arranged to meet Jihadi fighters. Leaders of the terror group promised they would not be harmed and they spent days talking to terrorists and members of the group’s “police force” about their vile cause. They also witnessed their squalid living conditions, which turned out to be far from the life of riches with a selection of wives catering to their every whim conjured up by ISIS recruiters to suck in impressionable young Muslims. Jurgen, who has written several books about the Middle East, is a friend of British hostage John Cantlie and wanted to see him during the visit five months ago.
Quarrel
The war photographer is being held by ISIS and appeared in several of its propaganda videos after being waterboarded and terrorised. Jurgen said: “I was devastated at what they did to John. There is nothing these perverse people are not able to do. “I wanted to meet him and he [Jihadi John] insisted that I should meet John Cantlie, who would give me a letter to David Cameron and the British people and to Cantlie’s family. IS wanted to film me accepting the letter. I said, ‘No, I will not play a role in your videos’ and we had the first quarrel. “Jihadi John was always masked, you could only see one eye and he had a strong accent, the same accent as Jihadi John we know from the videos.”
Emwazi was born in Kuwait but grew up and went to university in London. His last video appearance was in January in a film of him beheading Japanese journalist Kenji Goto. On their trip Jurgen and Freddie visited the Syrian cities of Aleppo and Raqqa as well as Mosul in Iraq, which have been captured by ISIS as part of its murderous campaign to form an Islamic state – and it was the same grim story wherever they went. Jurgen said: “Everywhere I was it was sleeping on the floor or in broken old beds.
These stories of fighters being rich and having several wives are told to persuade young people to join them. They only get pay-outs if they win a battle – those who conquered Mosul got $1,000 or $2,000 but normal fighters get $50 (£30) a month. For a while all we could get to eat were chocolate cookies which become horrible after a while. In Mosul we were in a restaurant and all the fighters eat are cheeseburgers, hummus, fries and Pepsi. “They don’t have 10 women per man, this is another myth. Most fighters don’t have a girl and the 15 and 16-yearold girls who leave our countries for IS get put into women’s houses where they try to find husbands for them.
He added: “I met many fighters from the UK, Sweden and Germany. I asked them questions about the Koran but they couldn’t answer because they don’t know the Koran. They can’t come home because they are betrayers in the eyes of IS fighters and are executed, condemned to death if they want to leave. Some have escaped, hundreds have been executed.” Jurgen believes the only way to stop Western recruits going to Syria is to stop them crossing the border with Turkey. He said: “We must force Turkey to allow us to police these borders.” And his assessment on IS? “It is a very complicated system but in the end is like all governments, there are four people at the top who aren’t really fighting for Islam, they are fighting for personal power.