This post has been updated with the UK government’s response.
Another video showing the killing of captives by the ISIL terror group has been released online. In the video, a man wearing a balaclava threatens the people of the UK specifically, and taunts British prime minister David Cameron, in what seems to be a British accent.
The video from the so-called Islamic State echoes those that featured Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwaiti who lived much of his life in the UK, and became known as “Jihadi John” because of his London accent. He was part of a group of four British jihadis nicknamed “the Beatles” by some of their captives. Emwazi, seen in videos murdering the journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, was reportedly killed in a drone strike in November in Raqqa.
In the video released this weekend, the accent of the man speaking to the camera is much less easy to identify. It has been described by several media outlets as British, but there are several points where it appears to have a clearly non-native lilt.
A spokeswoman for David Cameron said that the video should be dismissed as “propaganda” from the terrorist organization.
Five men accused of being “spies” for the UK are seen kneeling in the video, wearing red jumpsuits. Later, all the hostages appear to be shot. The 11-minute-long video ends with a short section in which a child, dressed in military clothing and a black headband, speaks to the camera. He says, also in English, “We are going to go kill the kafir [non-believers] over there.” The use of children is common in ISIL propaganda.
In December 2015, a video featuring a man speaking in Russian and addressing Vladimir Putin, before killing a man accused of being a “spy,” was released online.