His role as Islamic State’s sadistic butcher was a far cry from the football-mad schoolboy who moved to Britain from Kuwait with his parents in 1993. Three more children followed, all born after the family settled in Britain, and the family were said to be close, with both parents arriving at the school gate each day to collect their children. From angel to devil: Mohammed Emwazi (left) pictured as a schoolboy in London. British security officials would not comment about Emwazi on Thursday and would not confirm that he is Jihadi John. “He was upset and wanted to start a life elsewhere,” another friend said. A British newspaper later reported that it had seen new footage of Emwazi "unmasked" - although it was unclear when the video had been shot or whether the man in it was definitely Emwazi. After finishing primary school in 1999, young Mohammed moved to Quintin Kynaston Community Academy, in St John’s Wood, where he is believed to have studied alongside former X Factor judge and pop star Tulisa Contostavlos. Once they arrived, they were denied entry and interrogated and Emwazi later claimed to Cage, a campaign group in London, that they had been subject to harassment and abuse. (Stefan Wermuth/Reuters) 
 
 Emwazi flew to Amsterdam, where he claimed that an officer from MI5, Britain’s domestic security agency, accused him of trying to reach Somalia, according to e-mails that he later sent to Asim Qureshi, research director at the rights group Cage. In emails to the campaign group Cage, Emwazi said: �?He [Nick] knew everything about me; where I lived, what I did, the people I hanged around with.’ 
 
 �?Nick’ then tried to recruit the 21-year-old, Emwazi claimed, and threatened him when he refused to cooperate. According to Emwazi, his family then began planning for him to travel to Kuwait to get him away from the �?harassment’ he had suffered in Britain and he went to work for a computer programming company in the emirate. Home: Minicab driver's son Emwazi most recently lived at a flat in Queen's Park in west London 
 
 In his account to Cage, he said security officers continued to visit his family and he decided to make a �?new life’ in Kuwait, where he was once again planning to marry. Six months later, Adebowale and Michael Adebolajo hacked Fusilier Rigby to death in South East London. Emwazi made an official complaint to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, saying he had been assaulted by the officer. As for J1, in a 2013 court ruling on attempts to deport him the Court of Appeal described the Ethiopian as someone who had "thrown in his lot with a group of Islamist extremists who are committed to terrorism". Incensed by the decision to stop him returning to Kuwait, Emwazi told Cage he felt �?like a prisoner’ in London. He said he was �?a person imprisoned and controlled by security service men, stopping me from living my new life in my birthplace and country, Kuwait.’ 
 
 Friends told the Washington Post he was already talking wildly about travelling to Syria, where the uprising against Bashar al Assad was beginning in earnest. (Toby Melville/Reuters) 
 
 One friend said he believed Emwazi wanted to travel to Saudi Arabia in 2012 to teach English but was unsuccessful. Rejected by those, his father suggested he change his name in a bid to avoid any block from British authorities, and Cage said he changed his name by deed poll in 2013 to become Mohammed al-Ayan. He made one more attempt to fly back to Kuwait that year but was barred from leaving Britain again and disappeared from his parents’ home a week later. His parents reported him missing after three days but claimed it was four months before police arrived at their home and said they had information he was in Syria. His father, 51, told police they were wrong and that his son was in Turkey helping refugees from Syria, and the family are said to continue to deny that he is the masked IS executioner. �?I remember he was quiet - not reserved quiet, he had a lot of friends and was social. About the same time, Qureshi said, he sent an e-mail to Emwazi. Bilal al-Berjawi was killed by a drone strike in Somalia three years ago. “It’s a bit like the jihadis who say they’re going on a package tour to Turkey, then, once they’re there, shoot over the border to Syria.” 
 
 Berjawi and Sakr also had traveled to Kenya in February 2009 after telling relatives they planned to go on “a safari.” But they were deported back to Britain after a Kenyan hotel manager became suspicious. A close friend of Berjawi’s, Mohammed Sakr, who grew up in the same West London neighborhood, was killed in a drone attack a month later. A former student two years older than the Islamic State executioner has lifted the lid on his time at the university - as it's also revealed a talk by a Muslim extremist has been postponed due to 'security concerns'. Extremist: Haitham al-Haddad's speech has been postponed 
 
 Haitham al-Haddad was set to speak tonight, but the event will not go ahead as planned after it was revealed 'Jihadi John' studied computer programming at the university. Jihadi John sightings 
 
 August 2014: Video in which US journalist James Foley is apparently beheaded 
 
 Video in which US journalist James Foley is apparently beheaded 2 September 2014: Video in which US journalist Steve Sotloff is apparently beheaded 
 
 Video in which US journalist Steve Sotloff is apparently beheaded 13 September 2014: Video in which British aid worker David Haines is apparently beheaded 
 
 Video in which British aid worker David Haines is apparently beheaded October 2014: Video in which British aid worker Alan Henning is apparently beheaded 
 
 Video in which British aid worker Alan Henning is apparently beheaded November 2014: Video in which Jihadi John is shown killing a Syrian soldier in a mass beheading, which also shows body of US aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, also known as Peter Kassig 
 
 Video in which Jihadi John is shown killing a Syrian soldier in a mass beheading, which also shows body of US aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, also known as Peter Kassig 20 January 2015: Video in which Jihadi John is seen standing alongside two Japanese hostages and demanding a ransom in exchange for their release 
 
 Video in which Jihadi John is seen standing alongside two Japanese hostages and demanding a ransom in exchange for their release 31 January 2015: Video released appearing to show Jihadi John beheading Japanese hostage Kenji Goto 
 
 In August 2014, he appeared in the video which shows the murder of US journalist James Foley - and then over the subsequent months, similar films showing the killing of Steve Sotloff, David Haines and Alan Henning. “If these allegations are true, we are shocked and sickened by the news,” said a statement from the University of Westminster. Any student found to be engaging in radicalised activity would be referred to disciplinary procedures.
– Mohammed Emwazi, the British-Kuwaiti man who has been identified as "Jihadi John," had long been known to British security services—and according to the advocacy group Cage, the way they treated him may have contributed to his radicalization. According to the group, when he tried to travel to Tanzania for a "safari vacation" in 2009, he was detained, questioned, and returned to the UK by security officials who accused him of wanting to join militants, and he complained about harassment by security services in the years afterward. Cage says that after Emwazi moved to Kuwait later in 2009, he returned to Britain for a visit the following year and was told he could not return to Kuwait, leaving him feeling trapped and unable to return to his job and fiance. According to court papers seen by the BBC, however, authorities believed Emwazi was part of a network "involved in the provision of funds and equipment to Somalia for terrorism-related purposes and the facilitation of individuals' travel from the United Kingdom to Somalia to undertake terrorism-related activity," and had at least one associate who ended up fighting in Somalia with al-Shabab radicals. The director of Cage says Emwazi was never "somebody who ever said, ‘I hate the system, I reject the system,'" reports the New York Times. Instead, he says, "It's someone who said, 'I don't like the environment, but I'll work within the system to effect change.'" But a lot of people aren't buying the argument that harsh treatment from security services turned Emwazi into a brutal ISIS executioner. "Malcolm X and Martin Luther King got a lot more pressure from police, and neither decided that decapitating people is the right response," Brookings Institution fellow JM Berger tells the Times. After he was unable to return to Kuwait, Emwazi trained as an English teacher and changed his name to Mohammed al-Ayan in 2013, according to Cage. After another failed attempt to get to Kuwait, he left the family home in London to travel elsewhere. His parents reported him missing in August that year and were informed four months later that he was in Syria. Around where Emwazi grew up in a comfortable part of West London, people are stunned to find "Jihadi John" once lived among them. "It's a big shock to me and everyone here," a worshiper at a mosque 100 yards away from the address where Emwazi grew up tells the Washington Post. "He seems to be some sort of bogeyman for the Muslim community. We don't know who he is." Former primary school classmates describe Emwazi, who has five siblings and whose father is a taxi driver, as popular and obsessed with soccer. "He was the only Muslim [in] our class," one classmate tells the Daily Mail, recalling that Emwazi once got up in religious studies to explain his religion and spoke about fasting. Emwazi graduated from the University of Westminster in 2009 with a degree in computer science. "If these allegations are true, we are shocked and sickened by the news," the university said in a statement. "Our thoughts are with the victims and their families."