Did British Security Services Drive ‘Jihadi John’ to Join ISIS? Emails and Phone Exchanges Raise Serious Questions

‘In May 2009, the London-based human rights group Cage UK received a panicked phone call from a young man who had just been interrogated by the British security agency MI5. He had just returned from a trip to Tanzania when he was accosted by an MI5 agent who accused him of seeking to travel to Somalia to fight with Al-Shabab, a radical Islamist group waging a civil war against the country’s Western-backed government.

“He asked me, What do you think of 7/7?” the young man recalled, referring to the coordinated suicide bombing attacks that struck London on July 7, 2005. “I said, man, innocent people have died. You know, this is extremism!”

Next, the MI5 agent asked for his opinion of the US invasion of Afghanistan. The man replied that he opposed it on the grounds that innocent people were killed. It was a common view not only among British Muslims, but among supporters of the UK’s Labor Party in general.’

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