A member of the so-called ‘Beatles’ gang of British ISIS terrorists has admitted he was behind a plot to kill soldiers and police in west London.
Alexanda Kotey, who was captured by Kurdish fighters in Syria last year, said he had funnelled cash to UK extremists and tried to arrange a massacre in Shepherd’s Bush.
Speaking to ITV News he also acknowledged his contacts with fellow British terrorist Mohammed Emwazi, the ISIS killer nicknamed ‘Jihadi John’.
He said the pair had worked as ‘hostage keepers’ in Syria to extract information from prisoners such as journalist James Foley, who was beheaded by Emwazi in 2014.
Alexanda Kotey (pictured), who was captured by Kurdish fighters in Syria last year, said he had funnelled cash to UK extremists as he tried to arrange a massacre in Shepherd’s Bush
Kotey said the planned London killing spree, which was foiled in 2014, was supposed to be part of a wider plan to create sleeper cells in European countries.
‘The idea was to plant people in countries so that if there was any aggression from these countries they would have people who would conduct a mission,’ he said.
Discussing his role with Emwazi he said the Londoners had joined Islamic State in Idlib as regular fighters in 2012.
Following an ‘order from above’ they were relocated to Aleppo, where there were more Western prisoners, he said.
‘When that order came for [Emwazi] to move to the countryside he requested that we accompany him,’ he said.
‘They were more in number [the prisoners] ,they had gathered them in one place, different nationalities, varying nationalities.
‘[At] this point it was instructed to extract email addresses from them to open up communication.
Kotey has also acknowledged his contacts with fellow British terrorist Mohammed Emwazi, the ISIS killer nicknamed ‘Jihadi John’ (pictured)
‘This was mostly before, in the time of Idlib – the time of Aleppo there wasn’t really that kind of interaction between myself and the prisoners.
‘It was go and take the necessary information and leave,’ he said.
Despite admitting his association with Emwazi, known for carrying out several filmed beheadings, Kotey denied any involvement with those killings.
‘I don’t see in my case it makes a very big difference if I was actually there or not there,’ he said.
However U.S. officials said Kotey and fellow ‘Beatle’ El Shafee Elsheikh ‘are suspected to have participated in the detention, exploitation and execution of Western detainees’.
Kotey is under guard in the caliphate’s former heartland having fallen into the hands of Kurdish militia fighters in January.
Emwazi was killed in a US air strike in 2015 after appearing in a number of videos in which captives including British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning were beheaded.
The fourth gang member, Aine Davis, was convicted of being a member of a terrorist organisation and jailed in Turkey in May 2017.
The four Londoners were linked to a string of hostage murders in Iraq and Syria during the bloody Islamist uprising and gained global notoriety.
Two further men were jailed for life over the Shepherd’s Bush terror plot in 2016.
Tarik Hassane and Suhaib Majeed were imprisoned at the Old Bailey for conspiracy to murder and preparation of terrorist acts.
Hassane had identified Shepherd’s Bush police station and the Parachute Regiment Territorial Army Barracks at White City as possible targets on Google Street View.
Mohammed Emwazi (left), also known as Jihadi John, and Aine Davis (right), who was jailed in 2017 in Turkey for belonging to the terror group
The judge told the pair: ‘It is shocking, tragic and deplorable that you, two young British men, educated through the UK school system, undertaking university courses, should be so influenced by the bloodthirsty version of Islam presented by Isis and other similarly minded groups, that you decided to take up arms against your fellow British citizens and those charged with protecting them in the streets of your own city.’
Prosecutor Brian Altman QC had said Hassane and Majeed were heavily influenced by the rise of Islamic State, which pronounced a caliphate in June 2014.
Within days, Hassane pledged his allegiance to IS and encouraged his friends to follow suit. He was pictured posing with a gun in one hand and a book on Osama bin Laden in the other.
His close friend Majeed was studying at the prestigious King’s College London and was chairman of its Islamic society.
The court heard that Majeed sent a picture of a dead fighter ‘laughing’ to a Telegram chat group named Turnup Terror Squad, of which Hassane was also a member.
And he had a ‘grim’ video of Jihadi John beheading a journalist on his iPad, jurors were told.
Acting on instructions from mastermind Tarik Hassane, physics student Majeed had got his hands on a gun and ammunition and was discussing buying an untraceable moped before police swooped to arrest him in September 2014.
His old school friend Hassane, nicknamed The Surgeon, was studying medicine in Sudan at the time but rushed back to London to carry on as a ‘lone wolf terrorist’ before he too was picked up.