Just getting to meet the two British jihadists accused of being part of the so-called “Beatles” cell of Islamic State terrorists is an arduous task. Crossing the Tigris in a battered river barge is the only route available from Iraq into Rojava, the Kurdish controlled part of northern Syria where the two men – Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh – are being held along with hundreds, possibly thousands, of Isis foreign fighters.
The Kurdish YPG militia oversee all movement in Rojava and its intelligence wing controls access to their detainees a seven hour drive away in the town of Kobane; a journey that takes visitors through dozens of towns battle scarred by coalition aerial bombardments and desperately fierce fighting that saw Isis, territorially at least, defeated. The “Beatles”, four British men led by Mohammed Emwazi or “Jihadi John”, as he became known, are accused of holding more than 20 western journalists and aid workers, beheading seven of them, and posting their murders on the internet.
Emwazi is dead, killed in an airstrike.
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