A former member of ISIS claims the savage known as Jihadi John personally beheaded Japanese prisoner Kenji Goto — who was tricked into thinking he would not be killed after being told it was a mock execution.
Speaking to Sky News from Turkey, the ISIS defector, referred to as “Saleh,” admitted that he stood by and watched as the ISIS executioner identified as Mohammed Emwazi, 26, brutally murdered the 47-year-old journalist.
“When he killed Kenji Goto, I live showed this [saw this] but not near, from a little [distance],” Saleh said. “After he was killed him, three or four person come and take over the body and put in a car. After that, John went on a different road.”
Goto’s death was not shown in the gruesome ISIS execution video released last year. The footage only shows him kneeling before Emwazi just moments before he is killed and then shifts to a scene showing his decapitated body.
“The big boss was there with them,” Saleh explained. “Turkish man say ‘put this camera there, change place there’ but John [was] the big boss. All time, all time say to all ‘fastly, fastly, fastly, we should finish.’ So respect him. Only he talks orders — others do.”
Saleh is the only person to come forward and claim that he witnessed Emwazi actually doing the beheading.
In a bid to keep Goto and others in the dark about their impending doom, the Islamic State poster boy would routinely stage mock executions so Western hostages wouldn’t know when they’d actually be killed, Saleh said.
“He [Emwazi] would say to me, ‘say to them, no problem, only video, we don’t kill you, we want from your government [to] stop attacking Syria. We don’t have any problem with you; you are only our visitors’ … So they don’t worry,” he explained to Sky News.
“Always I say to them, ‘don’t worry, doesn’t matter, nothing dangerous for you.’ But at the end I was sure [they would die].”
When it came time to execute Goto, Emwazi was the only person allowed to take his life because the London college grad was the chief killer of foreign hostages for the Islamic State’s media wing, Saleh said.
“A Syrian man anyone [in ISIS] can kill,” he told the British television station. “But strangers [foreigners], only John.”
Saleh, who worked as a translator before joining ISIS, also says that hostages were given Arabic names to calm them down and assure them that they were among friends, according to Sky News.
“ISIS gave the hostages an idea: ‘You should be Muslim and come with us,'” he explained. “When I went to the rehearsal he said to [Kenji] Goto ‘Abu Saad.’ Maybe I was thinking to myself ‘maybe they try [find] this name so hard, “Kenji Goto.”‘
“Maybe they could not say [Kenji Goto] so [they say] Abu Saad,” Saleh added. “But when I noticed Goto, when they said Abu Saad to Goto, direct [he] relax.”
Emwazi hasn’t been seen since ISIS released the video showing Goto’s dead body.