Getty / Supplied to BuzzFeed News 
 
 A second member of the notorious ISIS execution cell once headed by “Jihadi John” has been unmasked as a “quiet and humble” football fan from west London, BuzzFeed News and the Washington Post can reveal. 
 
 Thirty-two-year-old Alexanda Kotey has been identified by British and American intelligence services as one of four ISIS guards, collectively known as the “Beatles”, who are responsible for beheading 27 hostages. The guards were given their nickname by hostages because of their British accents. 
 
 Supplied to BuzzFeed News Alexanda Kotey 
 
 It can be revealed that Kotey travelled to the Middle East alongside three other known extremists on a controversial aid convoy to Gaza organised by the London mayoral candidate George Galloway in 2009 – and friends in west London have not heard from him since. He is the second member of the cell to be identified, after “Jihadi John” was exposed as west Londoner Mohammed Emwazi, who was killed by US a drone strike in November. The other members of the cell, nicknamed “Ringo”, “George”, and “Paul”, remain among the world’s most wanted men and are being hunted by intelligence and security services on both sides of the Atlantic. A US intelligence official confirmed that Kotey had travelled to Syria and said his role in the taking of Western hostages was being investigated. A UK security official declined to comment. It is not clear whether Kotey is the guard nicknamed “Ringo”, who has previously posted online about growing up in west London’s Shepherd’s Bush area, or “George”, identified by some hostages as a senior figure in the group. There are understood to be discrepancies in the accounts of freed hostages as to which guard had which nickname. BuzzFeed News and the Washington Post have spoken to people familiar with the investigation into the identities of the “Beatles”, obtained identity documents, and interviewed neighbours, relatives, and friends to build a picture of the unassuming young man believed to have become one of ISIS’s most feared terrorists. Kotey, who is half Ghanaian, half Greek Cypriot, grew up in a family of dress cutters in Shepherd’s Bush – just under two miles away from Emwazi – and was an avid supporter of Queens Park Rangers Football Club. He is said to have converted to Islam, grown a beard, and begun dressing in robes in his early twenties, after falling in love with a Muslim woman. He left two young children in Britain. His family said they had not seen him "for a number of years" and were "deeply distressed" at news of that he had been identified as an ISIS guard in a statement released shortly after this story was published. 
 
 Daniel Sorabji / AFP / Getty Images Newspaper front pages in February last year after the identification of Mohammed Emwazi as "Jihadi John". 
 
 Investigators believe Kotey was radicalised while attending the Al-Manaar mosque in Ladbroke Grove alongside Emwazi. Friends have confirmed that he was a regular at the mosque and advocated suicide bombing from a street stall outside. The mosque leaders said they have clamped down on radicalisation and work closely with the police and the council to combat extremism. Kotey is also connected to the “London Boys” – a network of extremists who fomented radical Islam while playing five-a-side football in west London and have been linked to the 7/7 London bombings and the subsequent failed 21/7 plot. 
 
 Kotey, who is half Ghanaian, half Greek Cypriot, grew up in a family of dress cutters in Shepherd’s Bush and was an avid supporter of Queens Park Rangers Football Club. 
 
 Documents obtained by BuzzFeed News have confirmed that Kotey travelled to Gaza alongside Reza Afsharzadegan, a London Boys leader who was close to Emwazi, and two other extremists on the £1 million aid convoy led by Galloway in 2009. A friend who travelled in the same group says he lost track of Kotey after reaching Gaza and does not know whether he ever returned to Britain – but has since heard that he is in Syria. A spokesman for Galloway said: “There was, of course, a vetting procedure on those who applied to join the convoy,” and that “the names you have given are unknown to us”. Investigators believe Kotey travelled to Raqqa, ISIS’s de facto capital, where he is suspected of joining the group of Britons who systematically beheaded and tortured hostages placed under their watch and would become known as the “Beatles”. The four members of the “Beatles” cell gained a reputation as the cruellest of all ISIS guards, using electric shocks, waterboarding, and mock executions – including a staged crucifixion – to terrorise their hostages. They have beheaded seven British, American, and Japanese hostages and 18 members of the Syrian army. 
 
 AFP / Getty Images A group of men look on as a jihadi flag is raised on a building in Raqqa, which would go on to become the de facto ISIS capital. 
 
 A Danish hostage, Daniel Rye, who was released in June 2014, recalled in a memoir how "Ringo" had kicked him 25 times in his ribs on his 25th birthday, telling him it was a gift. Rye wrote that "George" dominated the group of jailers and was the most violent and unpredictable. Rye also recalled being taken to an open grave where a suspected spy was shot by Emwazi on "George"’s instructions while "Ringo" filmed. Rye said the Britons forced him and other hostages to climb into the grave and photographed them. "Ringo" has stated online that he is “As British as they come”. He also described himself as “born and raised in Shepherd’s Bush, was a big QPR fan, love a good old fry up in the mornings”. When BuzzFeed News traced Kotey to his family address in Shepherd’s Bush, two garden gnomes wearing Queens Park Rangers football strips outside the front door were the first clue that he might indeed be “Ringo”. 
 
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 The deeply divided pocket of west London where Kotey grew up has an uncomfortable history as a breeding ground for violent extremism. At least nine jihadis, including Emwazi and the failed 21/7 bombers, were radicalised in the notoriously unequal area, where some of London's most deprived families live on sprawling estates alongside multimillion-pound mansions, home to super-rich models, footballers, and minor royals. Alexanda Amon Kotey – known as Alexe to his friends – was born on 13 December 1983 to a Greek Cypriot mother who worked as a printing machinist and a father who hailed from a long line of Ghanaian dress cutters. Kotey’s mother was just 17 when the couple married, and gave birth to his older brother two months later. Alexe followed four years after that, but the family was struck by tragedy just before his third birthday when his 28-year-old father died of multiple injuries. A relative told BuzzFeed News he had jumped in front of a train. 
 
 Kotey’s mother said her son had converted and adopted an Islamic name after falling in love with a Muslim woman. 
 
 Neighbours recall Kotey as a “reserved, polite boy” who was a keen supporter of Queens Park Rangers. Kim Everett, who has lived next door to the family for 25 years, remembers Kotey and his brother playing football with her sons in the building’s back garden, and teasing them for supporting Chelsea FC. “I knew him since he was this big,” she said, gesturing downwards. “He grew up with my sons. He was lovely and a really quiet boy.” Everett said she saw Kotey less often after he moved out of his family home and that she was taken by surprise when she encountered him again when he was about 20 and found he had converted to Islam. “The next time I saw him he was bearded, full garments,” she said. “I did say to [his mother]: ‘Alexe’s changed his faith?’, and she said yes. She wasn’t too happy.” Kotey’s mother told Everett her son had converted and adopted an Islamic name after falling in love with a Muslim woman. Everett told BuzzFeed News he went on to marry and then split up with the woman after having two daughters with her, and the relationship was confirmed by his friends. The children continue to visit their grandmother at the Kotey family home today. Kotey’s mother and brother, who are not being named, refused to talk to reporters from BuzzFeed News and asked that their privacy be respected. After this story was published they released a statement saying: "The Kotey family are deeply distressed about recent media reports involving Alexe. They have not seen Alexe for a number of years. They would ask the media to respect their privacy and to desist from attempting to contact them, and not to seek to take or publish any photographs of them. They would like to make it clear they will not be commenting any further on this matter." Kotey’s conversion surprised those who knew the family. A man who worked with Kotey’s older brother at a Puma store remembered him visiting the shop. “I know that Alexe converted to Islam,” he said. “I remember being surprised because [his brother] wasn’t very religious.” 
 
 Supplied to BuzzFeed News Kotey with his British passport on the "Viva Palestina" aid mission. 
 
 According to friends, Kotey’s faith became more extreme after he began visiting the Al-Manaar mosque, where intelligence agencies believe he and Emwazi were radicalised. A former friend who also attended the mosque recalls becoming concerned about Kotey’s increasingly radical views. “The guy used to have this stall outside the mosque,” he said, “and those guys used to openly preach and argue about what they thought was their cause or ideology.” He remembered Kotey debating with a more moderate friend of his outside the mosque: “My friend, now, he would say, ‘You can’t kill yourself, you can’t commit suicide, it’s forbidden in the Qur’an,’ and he [Kotey] would try to justify it, for suicide bombing.” Adam Nazar, an advisory board member at Al-Manaar, said there had been few controls in place until 2014 when the new leadership at the mosque had “really put a clamp down on everything”. He continued: “The thing with mosques are people can have public conversations in the corner of a mosque and no one would know, that’s the same with a church, that's the same with a bus station, that's the same with a college.” He said that under the new leadership, Al-Manaar now ​“has a great relationship with the council, with the police in terms of working around extremism, working with youths, and so forth”. Dr Abdulkarim Khalil, ​the ​previous leader of the mosque, ​spoke of his difficulties in preventing the radicalisation of young men in the community in a 2014 interview. “We try our best to control what goes on in our premises,” he said. “We don’t allow people to address the congregation; we don’t allow people to distribute literature. “Unfortunately these things happen on the big occasions, like on Fridays. And then you find people on the street outside the mosque, lobbying people, giving out literature — some of it for good causes, some of it for others.” Kotey is also said to have fallen in with the London Boys network of extremists in west London, through which intelligence agencies suspect he came into contact with Emwazi’s associate Afsharzadegan. “He’s been known to hang out with that crowd since 2008, maybe even before that,” the friend said. Despite Kotey’s extremist views, the friend remembers him as being “humble, quiet and reserved”, well-versed in religious literature and shy of being photographed. The man who is suspected of going on to film ISIS executions was in fact so camera-shy that it took his friend hours of searching through his old computer hard drives before two photographs of him were eventually found. The pictures, which have been verified independently by another friend of Kotey’s, were taken in February 2009 on the controversial “Viva Palestina” aid mission to Gaza, organised by Galloway. The friend who spoke to BuzzFeed News travelled with Kotey on the 5,000-mile journey, along with hundreds of British volunteers carrying a reported £1 million worth of aid to the Palestinian territory in a convoy of 110 vehicles. 
 
 AFP / Getty Images The "Viva Palestina" aid convoy of ambulances leaving central London for Gaza in December 2009. 
 
 Viva Palestina was beset with controversy when, the day before its departure, nine of the volunteers were arrested under the Terrorism Act by Lancashire police. All were later released without charge, and Galloway branded the move an attempt to “smear and intimidate the Muslim community”. However, a list of the convoy volunteers obtained by BuzzFeed News reveals that three of the men who travelled alongside Kotey are now known as extremists. Among them was Afsharzadegan, who was in the same sub-group of 25 volunteers. The British-Iranian terror suspect travelled to Somalia in 2006 to be trained by a top al-Qaeda operative, and intelligence agencies believe he was sent back to Britain with instructions to recruit members for al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab. 
 
 
 
 Despite Kotey’s extremist views, the friend remembers him as being “humble, quiet and reserved”, well-versed in religious literature and shy of being photographed. ||||| Taos, New Mexico (CNN) The evidence was intended to paint a disturbing picture of a zealous family training for a violent mission against government institutions, New Mexico prosecutors said. 
 
 The family fled Georgia for a compound in New Mexico where they trained their children in firearms use, according to testimony. A child died at his father's hand during a religious ritual intended to expel religious demons from his body. Eleven more malnourished children were later found on the property. 
 
 The family believed that once the demons were gone, the boy would return as Jesus four months later and tell his family which institutions to get rid of, a witness said. Those who did not believe "their message" would be killed or detained "until they believed," a teenager on the compound said, according to a FBI agent. 
 
 But none of that makes them a present danger to the community or to their children, a defense lawyer argued. They were following religious rituals that might be viewed in a different light if they were white Christians instead of black Muslims, the lawyer claimed. 
 
 After four hours of testimony on Monday, a judge sided with the defense. She ruled that the suspects were not shown to be a threat and allowed them unsecured bond. 
 
 "What I've heard here today is troubling, definitely. Troubling facts about numerous children in far from ideal circumstances and individuals who are living in a very unconventional way -- although if you have lived in northern New Mexico for any period of time you are aware that many people here live in unconventional ways," Judge Sarah Backus said. 
 
 Defendant Siraj Wahhaj and his relatives -- sisters Hujrah Wahhaj and Subhannah Wahhaj, his partner Jany Leveille, and brother-in-law Lucas Morten -- each face 11 counts of child abuse. They have pleaded not guilty. 
 
 Most troubling was evidence about the apparent death of 3-year-old Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj, Backus said. Remains of a young boy found on the compound are awaiting positive identification. But the judge said none of the evidence presented Monday told her anything about the surviving children, who are in state custody away from the compound. 
 
 "The state alleges there was a big plan afoot but the state has not shown to my satisfaction by clear and convincing evidence what in fact that plan was," Backus said. 
 
 "The state wants me to make a leap, and it's a large leap. And that would be to hold people in jail without bond based on -- again -- troubling facts. But I didn't hear any choate plan that was being alleged by the state." 
 
 A violent mission or a religious journey? 
 
 Lawyers for the defendants called the ruling a positive step for their clients in a case that could test the bounds of religious freedom in the justice system and the court of public opinion. 
 
 The defendants were taken into custody after an August 3 raid on their compound. Early on, the local sheriff called the suspects "extremist of the Muslim belief." He later said that his statement was based on their appearance and he did not intend to imply violence. 
 
 The suspects' faith has been an undercurrent in the case ever since, one that came to the fore in Monday's hearing -- even though neither prosecutors nor witnesses explicitly referred to the defendants' Muslim faith. 
 
 "This was not a camping trip and this was not a simple homesteading, the kind that many people do in New Mexico," prosecutor Timothy Hasson said. "The evidence as a whole suggests that this family was on a mission. And it was a violent one, and it was a dangerous one." 
 
 But Siraj Wahhaj's lawyer said "no one would bat an eye" if the suspects were white Christians accused of shooting guns on their property or practicing their religion. 
 
 "If these were white people of a Christian faith who owned guns, that's not a big deal because there's a Second Amendment right to own firearms in this country. If these were white Christians, faith healing is of no consequence because we have freedom of religion in this country. But they look different and they worship differently from the rest of us," Thomas Clark said Monday. 
 
 "When black Muslims do it there seems to be something nefarious, something evil," he later said outside the courthouse. 
 
 Coverage of the case has focused largely on Siraj Wahhaj and his missing son, Abdul-Ghani, the boy whom prosecutors said was killed during the ritual and understandably so. The search for Abdul-Ghani and his father -- who is wanted in Georgia for his alleged abduction -- led authorities to the New Mexico compound. Despite being granted bond, he will remain in custody while he waits for authorities in Georgia to execute his fugitive warrant, Clark said. 
 
 But a lawyer for Jany Leveille, the woman described as Siraj Wahhaj's "Muslim wife" in testimony Monday, said her reasons for being on the compound may not be quite what they seem. 
 
 "She believed in her religion and tried to follow the tenets of her religion," Kelly Golightley said. "They may have been running in fear of their lives ... She was a mom, she was taking care of her children. Maybe not in a way that we understand." 
 
 'Take all your money out of the bank and bring your guns' 
 
 Prosecutors alleged the family came to New Mexico to prepare for Abdul-Ghani's return as Jesus. The family believed Leveille received messages from God through the angel Gabriel, FBI agent Travis Taylor testified. 
 
 One of those messages was for the family to go to New Mexico, where Morten had property, and to continue rituals that began in Georgia to expel demons from Abdul-Ghani's body. 
 
 The boy suffered from seizures, requiring constant care and medical attention, his mother, Hakima Ramzi, previously told CNN. After a trip to Saudi Arabia in October 2017, Siraj Wahhaj said he wanted to stop giving his son medication and perform rituals to "cast demonic spirits" out of his son's body, Ramzi told investigators, according to prosecutor John Lovelace. 
 
 Siraj Wahhaj is accused of abducting Abdul-Ghani's from his mother's home in Jonesboro, Georgia in November. A few weeks after his alleged abduction, he was in a car accident in Alabama with some of his children and Leveille. It's not clear if Abdul-Ghani was in the car. 
 
 Wahhaj told a trooper that the family was on its way to New Mexico to go camping, Lovelace said, but the trooper noted in his report that he saw no camping equipment in the overturned vehicle. He also told the officer that he was married to Leveille, though she would clarify to the officer that they were not legally married, Lovelace said. 
 
 Morten picked up the family in a rental truck and drove them and their belongings to New Mexico, including a weapons cache that included handguns, a bulletproof vest, several magazines, Lovelace said. But when Clayton County police questioned Morten in December, he said he didn't know where Wahhaj was. The truck and the weapons were eventually found at the compound. 
 
 At some point, Morten passed on a letter from the someone at the New Mexico compound to Wahhaj's brother inviting him to join them and "die as a martyr," Lovelace said. The letter instructed him to "leave whatever we told you to leave" and "take all your money out of the bank and bring your guns." The letter also told him not to alert their father. 
 
 The behavior suggested Wahhaj was trying to "cut ties in the Atlanta area" as he relocated to New Mexico, Lovelace said. 
 
 Account of boy's death emerges 
 
 After the raid, FBI agent Travis Taylor testified that he interviewed two children from the compound, ages 13 and 15, who shared information about events before Abdul-Ghani's apparent death. 
 
 According to one of the children, the family arrived in New Mexico sometime in January, Taylor said. The rituals on Abdul-Ghani continued in New Mexico under Leveille's direction, the FBI agent said. According to one of the teens, Leveille believed that Abdul-Ghani was her baby and Ramzi had stolen him from her womb using black magic, Taylor said. 
 
 In the rituals, which went on for several days, Abdul-Ghani's father recited verses from the Quran and held his hand on the boy's forehead as he foamed from the mouth, Taylor said. During one of those rituals, according to the children, Abdul-Ghani passed out and his heart stopped beating, the agent testified. 
 
 He has passed on, Taylor said, but the family believed he had already died and that his body was inhabited by demons. They believed he would return four months later as Jesus and lead them on their mission, Taylor said. 
 
 His body was washed several times, wrapped in sheets and then buried on the compound, the agent testified. As his body deteriorated, he was moved to a tunnel beneath the compound, where two of the adults would wash his body every other day, according to Taylor. 
 
 But Siraj Wahhaj's lawyer suggested that such actions demonstrated reverence and respect, not abusive behavior. 
 
 "Touching a child and reading from the Quran -- that's somehow interpreted as insidious," Clark said. 
 
 Remains found 
 
 Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe was part of the law enforcement team that executed the first search warrant at the compound on August 3. 
 
 He found the children and Siraj Wahhaj in a small camper-trailer partly buried on the property. Weapons were scattered "in plain view" in the trailer, he said. The children clutched boxes of ammunition and Wahhaj appeared to be setting aside an an AR-style rifle, he said. 
 
 The sheriff said a child in the trailer told an agent that Wahhaj had told them to "arm up" as law enforcement entered the property, but Leveille told them to comply. Three days later, based on information from the children, law enforcement returned to the compound and found the remains of a young boy in the tunnel, hidden behind guns what the sheriff called a bag of "stale clothing." 
 
 The sheriff said he also noted a gun range about 25 to 30 feet from the trailer. When pressed by Wahhaj's lawyer, the sheriff conceded that there was no prohibition against teaching a teenager to use firearms. But there was nothing "prudent" about a firing range so close to living quarters, he said. 
 
 "I actually find that reckless." 
 
 Correction: A previous version of this story stated incorrectly that, according to testimony by FBI agent Travis Taylor, the Siraj Wahhaj family believed the family was inhabited by demons. In fact, Taylor testified the family believed the body of 3-year-old Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj was inhabited by demons.
– What Yahya Abu Hassan has described as the "best day of his life" involved sneaking his emaciated, pregnant wife and three sick young kids through a barbed-wire fence over the Syrian border to Turkey, where he didn't even say goodbye before they were whisked to safety. That day in September 2013 was the day Hassan ditched his family to devote himself to helping ISIS set up a caliphate, his story told in a preview for a longer article by Graeme Wood appearing in the Atlantic's next issue. Wood details Hassan's reputation as one of the most revered "teachers" among jihadist circles, known for his "staggering mastery of Islamic law and classical Arabic language and literature," as well as his fluency in English. When Wood first heard about Hassan in 2014 while researching a previous Atlantic article about ISIS, he was curious about his origin story and started poking around. First he found links to Hassan and his extreme views, but further detective work involving nomenclature and Google searches led to an astonishing discovery: a DOJ release about the 2006 conviction of data technician John Georgelas, who used to live in Texas not far from Wood, and who Wood determined was Hassan. What Wood found out next about the Greek-American is fascinating. An in-person conversation Wood had with Georgelas' father, Tim, about John—who Tim describes as once an easily swayed "follower" who experimented with psychedelic drugs—is especially revealing, as is Wood's scrutiny of Georgelas' relationship with his ex-wife, once a fellow jihadist. Most chilling is Georgelas' current ISIS role, in which it's speculated he may now hold the second most-powerful position. "He knows how to speak to Americans, how to scare them, how to recruit them—how to make the Islamic State's war theirs," Wood writes. Read the deep dive at the Atlantic.