Jihadi John’s mother recognised his voice on video

Militant 'Jihadi John', real name Mohammed Emwazi, went to school in west London. Picture: SWNS

Ghaneya Emwazi, 47, said that she identified Mohammed Emwazi, 26, as the masked militant known as “Jihadi John”, in the propaganda film in which American journalist James Foley was beheaded.

Mrs Emwazi and her husband Jasem, 51, who are currently living in Kuwait, have been questioned by police there following the naming of her son as the IS militant.

Mr Emwazi is understood to have told the police that he had not heard from his son since 2013, when he called from Turkey to say that he was travelling to Syria to volunteer for humanitarian work.

According to one local newspaper report, the father, a former police officer in Kuwait, told intelligence officers: “When his mother watched the film about Daesh [another name for IS] she saw the young man covering his face in the James Foley video. He threatened the USA. He said he would kill.

“She was shocked. She became frantic and started screaming, ‘This is my son’.

“We were all watching the video. We were scared to watch the video. Then we carried on watching it and we saw that it was Mohammed. We are completely distraught. My son is religious and he hates the West. He feels that they have abused him.”

The revelations came as Home Secretary Theresa May yesterday defended her decision to scrap relocation powers from measures designed to monitor terrorist suspects, as Labour claimed that the move was a “mistake” that could have led to the likes of Mohammed Emwazi joining IS or other militant groups in the Middle East.

Mrs May insisted that neither the police nor security services ever said that relocating British terrorist suspects away from their networks would stop them travelling to Syria.

But shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper called for either an independent or parliamentary investigation into whether the policy change made it easier for members of a west London terrorist group to travel to fight abroad.

She said Mrs May’s decision to scrap control orders in 2012 and replace them with terrorist prevention and investigation measures (Tpims), which did not have relocation powers, could have made it easier for the west London group to operate.

The Labour frontbencher said that since introducing Tpims, two terrorist suspects had escaped the security services while others being monitored also apparently left for Syria.

Mrs May replied: “You say the power to relocate has not always been there but what you fail to say is that the cases that have been raised in the media date from the time when control orders and the power of relocation were in place.

“And at no point has anybody from the police or security service said to me that if we had the power of relocation, we would be able to prevent people from travelling to Syria.”