Jihadi John, the nickname given to the unidentified ISIS terrorist seen threatening to decapitate two Japanese hostages in a video released Tuesday, is a rising star for jihadi propagandists, and now a prime target for the U.S.
"You now have 72 hours to pressure your government in making a wise decision, by paying the $200 million to save the lives of your citizens," the militant says in the video. "Otherwise, this knife will become your nightmare."
The video is nearly identical to those that preceded the beheadings of British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, as well as U.S. journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley last year,
Newsweek reported.
Jihadi John speaks with a British accent in the video, leading many to speculate that he is none other than Abdel Majed Abdel Bary, a British-Egyptian man from West London that formerly went by the rapper name L Jinny. Last August, he posted a picture of himself posing with the severed head of a Syrian soldier, leading people to speculate that he is the man in the hostage decapitation videos.
No evidence has definitively connected him to those videos, however.
The FBI began offering a $10 million bounty leading to the arrest of Jihadi John — whoever he is — this past September. The bureau has not, however, said whether or not it knows his real identity.
Raffaello Pantucci, a security expert at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, said that intelligence outfits will likely stay mum on Jihadi John's real identity, even if they know it, for fear of turning him into a "heroic figure."
"The last thing they want to do is mythologize this guy — they have no interest in making him a bigger figure than he already is," he told Newsweek.
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