MI5 didn’t make Jihadi John; he made himself

Poor Mohammed Emwazi. One day he’s your average ‘beautiful’ young man, nose buried in his computer studies books, looking for a job and looking for love. The next he’s being harassed by the security services, so intensely that — BOOM — he weeps and wails his way to the deserts of Syria where he changes his name to Jihadi John, dons an Islamic ninja outfit and starts chopping people’s heads off. Happy now, MI5? See what you did? Shame on you for pushing this studious, handsome London lad to become the Charles Manson of the Middle East.

That, at least, is a rough outline of the script being hawked by the organisation Cage. Yesterday, at the weirdest press conference since Eric Cantona said that stuff about trawlers and sardines, the heads of Cage reminisced about what a swell guy Emwazi was. Asim Qureshi, Cage’s research director, remembered him as ‘extremely kind’ and ‘a beautiful young man’ (get a room).