The brutal propaganda video released by Daesh terrorists showing the murders of five people it claims worked for British intelligence services is the latest in a string of such films to be made since the group grabbed the world’s attention by taking Iraq’s second biggest city in 2014.
9 June 2014 Mosul falls to Daesh, with the then Iraqi prime minister Nouri Al Maliki declaring a state of emergency and pledging to arm civilians and reorganise the country’s ailing military forces. The city was the third to fall under the terrorists’ control after Fallujah and Ramadi as it continued its rapid advance into Iraq.
29 June 2014 The terrorists claim the establishment of a new so-called caliphate that incorporates parts of both Iraq and Syria. The group, calls itself the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, shortens its name to Islamic State. The acronym in Arabic spells Daesh.
Early August 2014 US air strikes on Daesh targets begin after the group traps thousands of members of the minority Yazidi sect on a mountain in Iraq. It is believed they will be murdered by the terrorists if they come down from the mountain, while they face death by dehydration if they stay where they are.
19 August 2014 A video showing the murder of US journalist James Foley is released by the group. The killing is thought to be in retaliation for the US air strikes. The film is also the first in which the man who would later be unmasked as Mohammad Emwazi carries out the killings for which he will become notorious. Foley, who had gone missing in Syria in 2012, appears in an orange jumpsuit in the desert in an image that will become familiar over the coming months.
2 September 2014 The journalist Steven Sotloff becomes the second American to be murdered by Daesh in a propaganda video. His killing is also thought to be a reaction to the airstrikes.
13 September 2014 David Haines, a British aid worker who had been captured within days of arriving in Syria, is murdered by Emwazi in another video. Haines’s life had been threatened in the video depicting Sotloff’s murder and he became the first British person killed in a Daesh propaganda video. The film includes a warning that a second British man would be the next to die.
26 September 2014 The UK parliament decides to approve air strikes against Daesh targets in Iraq, although not those in Syria.
3 October 2014 Despite pleas from Al Qaida to release the British aid worker Alan Henning, who it said was genuinely trying to ease the suffering of Muslims in Syria, Daesh releases a video depicting his murder. The period between that video and that showing the killing of David Haines is marked by the release of three propaganda films fronted by a third British hostage, John Cantlie.
16 November 2014 The American aid worker and former soldier Peter Kassig, who had converted to Islam, becomes the fifth westerner to be killed in a Daesh propaganda video featuring Mohammad Emwazi. It differs from the four previous videos in that it does not show his actual murder or footage of Kassing pleading for his life. Later reports suggest that he refused to do so. Instead, the film shows a history of Daesh’s evolution and the killing of nearly 20 captured members of the Syrian armed forces, as well as Kassig’s body.
3 January 2015 Another propaganda video featuring John Cantlie is released - the eighth in which he features. It is part of a series called Inside, in which Cantlie shows a picture of life in the so-called caliphate. He also appears in the series called Lend Me Your Ears, making 10 films in total to date, as well being credited with writing articles for a Daesh magazine.
Late January 2015 Daesh releases a sixth propaganda video depicting the murder of its Japanese hostage, Haruna Yukawa. Less than a week late, another film reveals that a second Japanese man, Kenji Goto, who had gone to Syria to plead for Yukawa’s life, has also been murdered. The terrorists, who had expressed a willingness to release Goto in return for that of a fellow fighter, warned that Japan was now a target.
26 February 2015 The Washington Post and the BBC publish pieces identifying west Londoner Mohammad Emwazi as the masked man who has been seen murdering hostages on video.
13 November 2015 The Pentagon says there is a “high degree of certainty” that US forces succeeded in killing Emwazi in an air stike on the de facto capital of Daesh’s claimed caliphate, the northern Syrian city of Raqqa. The British government says it worked “hand in glove” with their US counterparts to launch the attack that killed Emwazi. While David Cameron says the terrorist’s death cannot immediately be confirmed beyond any doubt, he describes the attack on him as “an act of self-defence”.
