El Shafee Elsheikh, known to his victims as ‘Ringo’, grew up in White City, west London, after his family arrived from Sudan in 1993 when he was five.
His father was a communist and part-time poet who worked as a translator and opposed the Islamist dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir in his home country.
The couple had two other sons but his father separated from his mother two years after they arrived in Britain.
After graduating, Elsheikh went to Acton College to study engineering, then worked at a local car garage, as well as fixing rides at the visiting funfair on Shepherd’s Bush Green.
Elsheikh, known to his friends as “Shaf”, supported the Queen’s Park Rangers football team and spent three years, from the age of 11, with the Army Cadet Force .
In 2008, at the age of 19, he was involved in a fight on the municipal estate where he lived, which left him with multiple stab wounds to the back, side and chest.
Her older brother, Khalid, tracked down the assailant, a local drug dealer, and got into a fight that tore off part of his ear, according to police reports.
On Christmas Eve, Nathan Harris, a 15-year-old friend of Khalid, organized the shooting of dealer Craig Brown, 20, as he unloaded groceries from the trunk of his car on the estate.
Harris, who went by the name of Money Street, was convicted of murder. Khalid was acquitted but sentenced to 10 years in prison for possessing a firearm with intent to endanger his life.
Meanwhile, Elsheikh grew a beard and took to dressing in long black robes, spending his days handing out Islamist literature and perfumes outside Shepherd’s Bush Market.
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Who is IS ‘Beatle’ El Shafee Elsheikh and what did we find out during his trial?
Elsheikh left Britain on April 27, 2012, while his mother was in Sudan, flying to Malmo in Sweden on Ryanair without a return ticket.
He flew to nearby Copenhagen, Denmark, then took another flight to Turkey on April 30, then a third flight to Adana, in southern Turkey, from where he crossed into Syria on May 1.
In Syria, he was known as Abu Thabit, bought an AK-47 assault rifle and was trained by Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s franchise in Syria, before changing allegiance to the Islamic State.
He was joined in Syria in late August by his friends from west London, Mohammed Emwazi – known as “Jihadi John” – and Alexanda Kotey – known to the hostages as “George”.
How the police searched for evidence to link the ‘Beatles’
Scotland Yard revealed this week how they identified Elsheikh and Kotey after one of their freed hostages recalled a conversation in which they spoke of being arrested after a confrontation with the English Defense League (EDL) of right.
Police identified an EDL counter-protest against a march by extremist group Muslims Against Crusades, to mark the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, which began at the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square.
There were a number of flashpoints in central London and at around 6.30pm police were called to the Tyburn pub in Marble Arch where stabbings had taken place and a number of men were arrested , believed to be involved in the attack, including Kotey and Elsheikh.
Police then discovered Elsheikh’s phone number on Emwazi’s phone, which they had downloaded when he was charged with a series of bike thefts in September 2010.
Another crucial piece of evidence linking Elsheikh directly to terrorist activity in Syria came as officers re-examined evidence during a second arrest of Khalid Elsheikh, this time in 2014, for possession of a weapon. fist.
His cellphone included a voicemail from Elsheikh in Syria that was compared to his 2009 police interview and matched the recording.
After their detention in Syria, Elsheikh’s mother, Maha Elgizouli, fought a legal battle to try to prevent her son from being tried in the United States by preventing Britain from sharing the results of its investigation. The case was finally dismissed when America agreed not to impose the death penalty.
Elsheikh pleaded not guilty to the charges of kidnapping, conspiracy to murder and materially supporting terrorism, but he refused to testify and was found guilty following a trial in April.
Kotey pleaded guilty to all counts and was sentenced to life in prison.
Emwazi from Queen’s Park, west London, was killed aged 27 in a US drone attack on November 12, 2015.
