Even Other ISIS Fanatics Thought Mohammed ‘Jihadi John’ Emwazi Was A Weirdo, Ex-Fighter Recalls

Mohammed Emwazi, the disaffected ex-Londoner known to the world as the brutal ISIS murderer “Jihadi John,” was such a strange and unfriendly person that even other ISIS fanatics in Syria thought he was a weirdo, according to a former ISIS fighter who defected from the terror group and spoke to the BBC in an interview made public Sunday.

“He was strange,” said the former ISIS member, a man in his 20s identified only as Abu Ayman.

“He was cold. He didn’t talk much. He wouldn’t join us in prayer. The other British brothers would say ‘hi’ when they saw us on the road, but he turned his face away. The British fighters were always hanging out together, but he wouldn’t join them.”

The former ISIS terrorist revealed that ISIS employs “professional psychologists” who select candidates from among the hundreds of alienated youth who have traveled to Syria to join ISIS, hand-picking those who are best suited for presenting the brutal face of ISIS to the world, through the group’s gory but slickly produced online videos.

“Still, there was nothing special about Jihadi John,” said Abu Ayman. “Anyone could have become like him.”

The ex-ISIS fighter, however, believes that Emwazi is simply being used by the powerful ISIS leaders to attract publicity, in hopes that he can entice new recruits from the United Kingdom, Europe, and other countries.

“ISIS play him like a piano. He’s a celebrity to attract our Muslim brothers in Europe,” Abu Ayman told the BBC. “But some think he is showing off. They think he’s being used by ISIS.”

As reported by the Inquisitr on Saturday, high school acquaintances of Emwazi also described him as a lonely misfit desperate to appear “cool,” but suffering from chronic bad breath and an inability to talk to girls.

And according to recently released emails said to be written by Emwazi, the future ISIS poster boy and apparent killer of U.S. journalist James Foley and several other helpless ISIS captives, once confided in a reporter that he was contemplating suicide because he believed that British security agents kept him under constant surveillance.

“He seemed to have a persecution complex and desperately wanted his story to be told,” wrote British journalist Robert Verkaik of the Mail On Sunday newspaper. “His concerns seemed to border on paranoia.”

While it appears to be true that Emwazi was known to the British security agencies, who had actively attempted to recruit him as an informer against London-based terrorists, the surveillance was not tight enough to prevent Mohammed Emwazi from slipping away undetected to Syria where he assumed the persona of “Jihadi John” and proceeded to murder both British and American citizens in ISIS videos.