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Emwazi 'Best Employee We Had', Says Ex-Boss

Emwazi 'Best Employee We Had', Says Ex-Boss

The former boss of the Briton identified in reports as the sadistic Islamic State killer "Jihadi John" has said he was "the best employee we ever had".

Mohammed Emwazi was "very good with people" and was "calm and decent", according to the head of an IT firm in Kuwait, which hired the then 21-year-old as a salesman.

He also expressed shock the person he had known was behind the reign of terror in the IS videos.

Emwazi, 26, is believed to have murdered at least five Western hostages, including Britons Alan Henning and David Haines.

His ex-boss told The Guardian newspaper: "He was the best employee we ever had.

"He was very good with people. Calm and decent. He came to our door and gave us his CV."

The executive added: "How could someone as calm and quiet as him become like the man who we saw on the news? It’s just not logical that he could be this guy.

"Maybe he fell into the wrong hands when he went back."

Emwazi left the company suddenly in April 2010 after returning to London.

Further details about the killer came as emails emerged suggesting Emwazi considered suicide when he was a student, after suspecting MI5 was closing in on him.

He told a journalist in 2010 that he felt like a "dead man walking".

Emwazi had also contacted a campaign group after he was questioned by counter-terrorism officers while attempting to fly from Heathrow to his native Kuwait in 2010.

In emails to the CAGE organisation, he claimed the security services were "stopping him from living his new life" abroad, where he had secured a job and was getting married.

When Emwazi was first unmasked as "Jihadi John", representatives from CAGE described him as "extremely kind and gentle" and "the most humble young person we ever knew".

Meanwhile, divisions have opened up between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats over whether radical preachers should be banned from university campuses.

Conservative Party chairman Grant Shapps revealed on Sky News there is a "difference of opinion" within the coalition.

It comes after a former student at the London university where Emwazi studied said the campus was a toxic environment of radical Islam.

The University of Westminster, where Emwazi studied from 2006 and 2009 and earned a computer programming degree, has vehemently denied the claim.

In an interview on Sky's Murnaghan programme, Mr Shapps said: "Vince Cable doesn't want to do what the Conservatives want to do, which is to make sure that on campus we do not have radical preachers saying things which incite violence which ultimately can lead to the radicalisation of young people."

The department headed by the Lib Dem Business Secretary is responsible for higher education.

Mr Shapps said: "We have seen these three girls go off to Syria. We have seen Jihadi John. We don't think that sort of preaching should happen in our universities.

"People in Vince Cable's constituency of Twickenham or around the country deserve that protection and that means that we have to put proper, decent, tough rules in place which don't ban free speech but do prevent people from preaching death."

But Lib Dem Energy Secretary Ed Davey said the definition of extremism was "very nebulous" and said there was a danger clamping down on controversial speakers could force them underground.

He told Sky News: "Many people said we should ban the BNP from universities and platforms. We (Lib Dems) said no because we want to expose their arguments.

"What the Conservatives seem to be wanting to do is to introduce, against British values of free speech, a new type of rule which says that the state will know what extremism is.

"One person's subjectivity is another person's objectivity and therefore the phrase 'extremism' is very very nebulous, it's unclear, and there's a danger that the Conservatives will clamp down on free speech and that will be giving in to the terrorists and we're not prepared to do that."

The high school Emwazi attended, Quintin Kynaston Academy, is being investigated by the Department for Education - after a Sunday Telegraph report claimed that two other pupils from the north London school had been killed fighting for al Qaeda and al Shabaab.