Last member of IS ‘Beatles’ gang identified
The last British member of Islamic State’s savage “Beatles” gang was a “kind and softly spoken” former fairground worker, it has emerged.
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The last British member of Islamic State’s savage “Beatles” gang that included Jihadi John was a “kind and softly spoken” former fairground worker, it has emerged.
El Shafee Elsheikh, a 27-year-old Londoner, supervised the torture and killing of Western hostages held by the terror group.
He was on Monday named as part of the murderous IS execution cell that beheaded 27 hostages.
They also had a reputation for waterboarding, mock executions and crucifixions.
Elsheikh was identified through an investigation by the Washington Post and BuzzFeed News.
His name was confirmed by an unnamed former US counter-terrorism official and other people familiar with British citizens in Syria.
His mother Maya Elgizouli broke down in tears after being told he had been involved with the group nicknamed the “Beatles” by victims because of their English accents.
She sobbed: “No, no, not Shafee. That boy now is not my son. That is not the son I raised.”
Elsheikh, a British citizen whose family fled civil war in Sudan in the 1990s, was radicalised on the streets of West London before fleeing to Syria in 2012.
His execution cell included the knife-wielding killer Mohammed Emwazi - dubbed “Jihadi John” - who beheaded hostages, including British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, on camera.
Emwazi, 27, was killed last year in a US drone strike in Syria.
The other “Beatles” identified were Muslim converts Alexanda Kotey, 32, whose whereabouts are unknown, and Aine Davis, 31, who was arrested last year in Turkey.
Elsheikh, said to be still living in Syria with two wives and two young children, is now one of the world’s most wanted men.
He is being hunted by security services on both sides of the Atlantic.
His younger brother, Mahmoud, was killed fighting for IS in Iraq last year after following him to the war zone as a 17-year-old.
All four “Beatles” grew up in the same part of West London, although it is unclear if they knew each other before travelling to Syria.
Mrs Elgizouli, who lives in White City, said Elsheikh was the middle son of three raised alone by her after the family moved to Britain.
He supported Queens Park Rangers and worked as a mechanic.
But she said he was affected badly when his eldest brother Khalid was sentenced to ten years in prison for possessing a firearm after the killing of a gang member involved in a dispute with the family.
Elsheikh became heavily influenced by the sermons of a West London imam known for his radical beliefs.
Mrs Elgizouli, whose family were brought up as peace-loving progressive Muslims, said in 2011 her son became friends with a young man whose father was an Islamist rabble-rouser advocating jihad while in her house.
She said: “I came straight to him and said, ‘Never in your life come into this home and talk about jihad. Me, I teach my kids about religion, not you. Don’t give them any information about anything’.”
A few days later she found her son with his friend listening to radical Islamist teachings.
She said: “I found him with him in the back garden listening to a CD. He passes me the CD and it is a man who is working in a mosque in the high road.”
She once caught him watching a video of the imam espousing the virtues of dying in the name of God. She said she asked her son: “Shafee, you want to go and be a dead Muslim?” He answered, “No mummy”, she said.
He started attending sermons at three local mosques and within days had become a radical Islamist who wore long robes, grew a beard, and began espousing the holy war.
Elsheikh, who spoke Arabic fluently, left for Syria in April 2012.
His brother Mahmoud joined him there several months later, despite what his mother said were her efforts to have him returned to Sudan so he would not be able to go.
In March last year she was told that Mahmoud had been killed. She said she later confronted the imam who radicalised her children, slapping him in the face and shouting: “What have you done to my son?”
The Foreign Office declined to comment and the Home Office did not respond to questions. The FBI declined to comment.
A British mother who wanted her children to be part of a new generation of IS terrorists was jailed for two-and-a-half years yesterday.
Trainee maths teacher Lorna Moore, 34, a Muslim convert, was desperate to join her jihadi husband in Syria.
Police believe she was preparing to take her three children - the youngest of whom was 11 months.
Moore was part of the “Walsall Cell” of 11 extremists in the West Midlands who wanted to leave the UK. Three of the group were pregnant.
Moore, from Walsall, was jailed at the Old Bailey for failing to tell police that her supply teacher husband Sajid Aslam, 34, planned to join Islamic State.
Daily Mail