To find the British terrorists, police followed a “trail of very modest breadcrumbs,” but one piece of information that a captive thought was “pretty unremarkable” ended up being highly important.
According to Scotland Yard, freed hostages were able to provide vital intelligence identifying an IS kidnapping group known as “The Beatles” that had captured and tortured them.
Officers have revealed significant discoveries that enabled them to locate the jihadis and extradite two of them to the US for trial.
The use of speech recognition software and crucial information from liberated captives allowed police to identify the individuals marching with a group associated with the terrorist group al-Muhajiroun.
Due to their British accents, the group’s hostages began calling themselves “The Beatles.”
Mohammed Emwazi, also known as Jihadi John, initially appeared in an IS video depicting a masked guy with a British accent shooting a prisoner that was made public in 2014.
When Emwazi was questioned by police in 2012 for a string of bicycle thefts, the authorities were able to track down recordings of those conversations and compare them to the voice Emwazi used during the execution.
A professional forensic voice analyst concluded that Emwazi was “quite likely” the person in the video.
how the police developed their case
Officers then began to exclude other probable group members, which allowed them to eventually identify Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh, both from west London.
Police tracked a “trail of very small breadcrumbs,” according to Commander Richard Smith, head of Scotland Yard’s Counter-Terrorism Command, and piecing the case together was “like fitting together very small pieces of a jigsaw.”
One piece of information that was “pretty unremarkable” to the captives they spoke to but was crucial to police was revealed by the hostages.
It was a conversational memory in which one of the kidnappers mentioned that he had been detained during a London English Defence League (EDL) march.
The investigating team was able to go back and pinpoint a specific EDL march that happened in the capital on September 11, 2011, based on that tidbit of discussion.
It was a protest in response to a march organized by Muslims Against Crusades to commemorate the tenth anniversary of 9/11, which started at Grosvenor Square at the US embassy.
There were several hot spots in the heart of London, and at around six o’clock in the evening, police were called to the Tyburn bar in Marble Arch, where a stabbing had just occurred and several individuals had been detained on suspicion of being involved.
Kotey and Elsheikh were two of the people, according to records.
Both of the individuals were subsequently freed without being charged for that offense, but the information was crucial in enabling us to positively identify them as the persons the hostages had described to us.
images of weapons and severed heads
Kotey and Elsheikh’s phones had been seized at the time of the arrest, so the counter-terrorism command used the chance to study the data, and they showed a variety of messages between them.
They also discovered Elsheikh’s phone number, which Emwazi had downloaded when he was interrogated on the bike thefts.
After officers reexamined the evidence in a separate case, they discovered yet another important piece of information directly connecting Elsheikh to terrorist operations in Syria.
The Metropolitan Police’s anti-gangs squad Operation Trident arrested Elsheikh’s brother Khalid in 2014 after discovering a weapon at his residence.
Following the seizure of his phone and the discovery of alarming photographs, authorities contacted the counter-terrorism command, who conducted a more thorough investigation.
Numerous Telegram chats between Elsheikh and his brother were found by the police, proving Elsheikh was in Syria.
One had Elsheikh carrying a gun while dressed in military gear. Another displayed a gruesome image of severed heads along with Elsheikh’s remarks.
Officers re-analyzed the data using digital interrogation software that had advanced over the years, and more information was found after Kotey and Elsheikh were captured in Syria.
This includes a voicemail received from his brother that was identified as coming from someone they thought to be Elsheikh.
Voice experts were able to compare the two recordings when the officers discovered a police interview tape with Elsheikh from 2009 and came to the conclusion that there was a “very significant likelihood” that Elsheikh was the person in the voice note.
Kotey and Elsheikh were already in the US when the attorney general granted British police permission to file 139 charges against them, including kidnapping and murder.
Following their capture by the Western-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in 2018, the couple lost their British citizenship and were transported to the US for trial.
On Friday, Elsheikh, 33, will be sentenced. Kotey, 38, was sentenced to life in prison in Virginia in April after pleading guilty to kidnapping, conspiracy to commit murder, and financial support of terrorism.
After being deported to England by Turkish authorities last week, a man suspected of being the fourth member of the Beatles terror group was charged with crimes related to terrorism.
Aine Lesley Junior Davis, 38, a resident of west London as well, was detained on August 10 after flying into Luton Airport from Turkey.
