LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday dismissed as “desperate stuff” a new video by the Islamic State that seemed to again put a fellow Briton at the forefront of the militant group’s propaganda efforts.
The video, which depicts the execution of five men who the group claims were spying for Britain, features a masked man with a distinct British accent who wields a pistol as he threatens to “invade” the United Kingdom and implement Islamic law.
With its grisly content and blood-curdling message, the clip appears to self-consciously emulate slickly produced videos in which a British citizen who came to be known as Jihadi John is shown killing American, British, Japanese and Syrian hostages.
But the masked executioner in the new video does not appear to be the same as the one in the video series released in late 2014 and early 2015, adding to the evidence that Jihadi John was killed in a U.S. drone strike on the Syrian city of Raqqa in November.
U.S. military officials have said previously that they were “reasonably certain” that the strike killed Mohammed Emwazi, the 27-year-old Londoner who had been revealed as Jihadi John by The Washington Post.
The release of the latest video on Sunday spawned a new round of speculation about the identity of a man the British press immediately dubbed the “New Jihadi John.”
British officials refused to comment on the man’s identity, but intelligence services are working to try to match his voice with that of one of the hundreds of British citizens who have traveled to Syria or Iraq to join the Islamic State.
In all, 800 Brits are thought to have gone to join the fight, according to police figures. But approximately half have returned, while 100 are thought to have died in battle.
During a visit to east London on Monday, Cameron called the video “desperate stuff from an organization that really does do the most utterly despicable and ghastly acts. And people can see that again today.”
He suggested that the video was an attempt to deflect attention from the Islamic State’s recent setbacks on the battlefield, which include the loss of the critical Iraqi city of Ramadi late last month.
“It’s losing ground,” Cameron said. “It’s, I think, increasingly losing anybody’s sympathy.”
British warplanes have been involved in bombing Islamic State targets in and around Ramadi, as Iraqi forces have battled on the ground. Last month, after a contentious debate, the British Parliament authorized an expansion of the country’s air campaign to Islamic State targets in Syria.
Cameron told the radio station LBC that he had seen “part” of the latest video and that he would not mind if others watched “a little bit of this just to remind them about what a truly ghastly, murderous organization we’re up against.”
In the video, five men in combat fatigues, armed with handguns, line up behind five bound, kneeling men in orange jumpsuits in a desert. The man with the British accent addresses Cameron directly, calling him a “slave of the White House” and a “mule of the Jews.”
He accuses the kneeling men of having served as informants for Britain before they “confess.” Several of the men say they are from Syria, and one says he is from Libya. They are then shot in the back of the head.
The video then depicts a young boy, wearing camouflage and an Islamic State headband, saying militants will “kill” the nonbelievers and pointing into the distance. Britain’s Telegraph newspaper on Monday identified the boy as the son of a London woman, Grace Dare, who converted to Islam and moved to Syria to marry an Islamic State fighter.
“It’s definitely him,” the newspaper quoted the boy’s grandfather, Henry Dare, as saying. “Of course I’m worried. But there’s nothing I can do now.”
