LONDON — The unmasking of Islamic State militant “Jihadi John” as a London lad who had repeatedly been questioned by security services sent shock waves through Britain Friday, with Prime Minister David Cameron stepping in to defend British spy craft. Cameron tried to defuse criticism of Britain’s security service, which had “Jihadi John” on its list of potential terror suspects for years but were unable to prevent him from traveling to Syria, where he has played a prominent role in grisly beheading videos. Cameron did not mention “Jihadi John” or refer to his real identity: Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwait-born computer science graduate raised and educated in Britain. But he said the country’s spies make “incredibly difficult judgments” daily about how to pursue threats to national security and have broken up plots that would have caused immense damage. Emwazi had been known to the British intelligence services since at least 2009, initially in connection with investigations into terrorism in Somalia. David Anderson, who is in charge of reviewing Britain’s terrorism legislation, said intelligence agencies may have dropped the ball, but faced a big challenge to identify real threats from “hundreds, probably thousands” of suspects. “Perhaps they did slip up in this… Read full this story
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