Fears Mohammed Emwazi’s brother may have been radicalised

Mohammed Emwazi’s younger brother voiced support for the radical Islamic cleric who inspired one of Lee Rigby’s killers, the Telegraph can disclose. Omar Emwazi, 21, indicated that he admired Sheikh Khalid Yasin on his Facebook profile, which was deleted shortly after his brother was identified as “Jihadi John”. 

Yasin is an notorious American preacher who converted from Christianity to Islam and is believed to live in Manchester. He was named by Woolwich terrorist Michael Adebowale as his inspiration for converting to Islam. Adebowale, 22, said that lectures posted online by Yasin taught him the purpose of life. 

Emwazi has “liked” Yasin on Facebook, as well as Imran ibn Mansur, a preacher who who has likened being gay to having a “disease”. Mansur, 24, is a former rapper who calls himself Dawah Man and has reportedly blamed “filthy Western culture” for impulses which should be “surpressed” and claimed that homosexuality comes “under the category of ‘obscene, filthy, shameless’.”

Emwazi attended Quintin Kynaston, the same north west London school as his older brother, and was known there as a member of the “Muslim Mafia” – a group of particularly religious teenagers.

He is an integral member of a network called Power of Dawah, an evangelical Islamic group that tries to convert people in the street. The group has hosted lectures by various preachers, which are filmed and put online.

Its Twitter account follows Abdur Raheem Green, a controversial preacher who has justified domestic abuse and has suggested that the 7/7 and 9/11 attacks could have been carried out by western governments.

Emwazi registered the PowerofDawah.com website. When his brother was unmasked last week, Emwazi immediately renamed his Facebook profile Omar Omar in a bid to avoid detection. He later deleted it entirely, wiping all evidence of his activity on the social networking site.

A friend of Emwazi’s said she believed many pupils were being groomed by radicals whilst they were still at school . . . 

She said the “Muslim Mafia” were not popular among their peers as they were considered too judgmental. “They had a very specific set of values,” she added. “Quintin Kynaston was full of that. It was 70 per cent or 80 per cent Muslim. There was only one white kid in our class. In every year there was a set that was the Muslim Mafia that hung out together and were very religious. 

“So many of them are second generation immigrants whose parents are still very much in touch with their culture. I think there was a system of grooming at Quintin Kynaston because there have been a few of them.

“They petitioned to have a prayer room so they could pray five times a day and they always went to Regent’s Park mosque every single Friday. I think that’s where it happened. A lot of them suddenly got very religious. Pupils went there from various schools in the area. A group two years above me (from another school) went away and joined some kind of training camp and now four or five of them are dead. I think they would just get groomed.”