Mohammed Emwazi: ‘I was a dead man walking’

Computer programming graduate Mohammed Emwazi said he considered suicide after coming face-to-face with what he suspected to be security services as he attempted to sell a laptop to a buyer that had expressed an interest online in 2010.

In an email exchange with a former journalist for The Independent, Emwazi described how he became suspicious of the mystery buyer after they met.

It was also claimed that Emwazi was part of a cell orchestrated by Osama Bin Laden to wreak terror on the streets of London, including having a role in the failed July 21 bomb attacks in 2005, three weeks after the 7/7 bombings which killed 52 people and injured more than 700.

He told Robert Verkaik – now security editor at the Mail on Sunday – that he felt harassed by security services, in a series of emails in 2010, three years before he left to join IS, saying: “Sometimes I feel like a dead man walking, not fearing they (MI5) may kill me.

“Rather, fearing that one day, I’ll take as many pills as I can so that I will sleep for ever! I just want to get away from these people!”

Dispute over control orders

The development came as British security services faced compounding pressure over accusations of failing to keep track of potential terror suspects and forcing desperate British Muslims into the clutches of Islamic extremist groups.

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper claimed the security services’ hands were tied for nearly five years the Home Secretary’s “wrong” decision to scrap powers to move terror suspects away from their networks.

The power to force suspects to move to another part of the country – dropped when control orders were axed in favour of Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (Tpims) – has now been restored.

But Ms Cooper called for the security services to immediately brief the Intelligence and Security Committee on how the loss of the measures might have affected their work.

The Labour frontbencher said: “I think their (the security services’) hands have been tied I think by the Government. I think we should have had the control orders in place across this Parliament which we haven’t had because they removed some of the powers, and I think that has caused them more problems.”

Her view was compounded by Lord Carlile, who told Sky News: “Had control orders been in place, in my view there is a realistic prospect that Mohammed Emwazi, and at least two of his associates, would have been the subject of control orders with a compulsory relocation. If that had been the case, he would not have done what he’s done in recent times.”