The ISIS militant known as Jihadi John has been unmasked. (Photo : Reuters)
Until he was unmasked last week as Mohammed Emwezi, Islamic State (IS) beheader Jihadi John hid his face using black clothing. Special British forces hunting him are also covering their faces to avoid detection by IS surveillance systems by wearing combat burka.
The special suits worn by SAS and other elite snipers deployed in Syria were funded by a 1.1-billion-pound fund unveiled by British Prime Minister David Cameron in 2014. Part of their efforts to further avoid detection is to wear the black fatigues used also by members of the IS and to travel in Toyota pick-up trucks, reports Mirror.
It is the same suit that soldiers on reconnaissance mission use. A senior source of Mirror disclosed that although the suit is difficult to wear, troops still put it on because it saves their lives by reflecting infrared rays and disrupting human signature from surveillance radar used by the Islamic terrorist organization.
"The clothing certainly has the capability to allow us to operate as 'ghosts', which has a major psychological impact on the enemy, who knows we're there but cannot see us," Mirror quotes its source.
However, so pro-Coalition troops would not fire on the British special forces, they place the Union Jack flag on their vehicles when returning to area controlled by the Coalition. Britain has deployed more than 200 special forces soldiers that use drones and high-tech surveillance equipment in northern Iraq as part of Operation Shader.
Jihadi John, number 1 on Pentagon's "kill list," threatened last week to return to Britain - where he grew up and studied - to decapitate non-believers of the Islamic faith.
The numbers 2 and 3 on Pentagon's list were recently killed by drone or air strikes. Vice News confirms that Junaid Hussein, number 3 for being the top online recruiter of IS, was killed by a US drone strike in Syria. The source of the confirmation was Air Force Col. Patrick Ryder who told Pentagon reporters, "He had significant technical skills and expressed a strong desire to kill Americans ... He no longer poses a threat."
