The Sun Online speaks to a family team of "jihadi hunters" who have helped expose a string of fighters killed by coalition forces
A BRIT family dubbed the "jihadi hunters" have helped expose a string of Islamic State fighters later wiped out by coalition forces.
The family, from the Midlands, smashed evil plots to blow up thousands of innocent Britons at attacks across the country, including a suicide blast on an Armed Forces Day parade in Merton, south London.
They also passed on vital information from conversations with jihadi bride Sally Jones who urged them to kill the Queen during an attack on VJ commemorations in central London, in 2015.
The investigations have been published across TV and newspapers with Britain's security services previously lauding their work.
Dad John, 60, son Chris, 23, and daughter Sarah, 18, - whose names have been changed for this story - tracked some of Islamic State's most notorious fighters.
They include IS computer hacker Junaid Hussain, his wife Sally Jones, Brit recruiter Naveed Hussain and US Pentagon target Abu Issa Al Amriki.
The trio - who live in a modest detached home in Shakespeare country - targeted the jihadis on social media and encrypted mobile apps by disguising themselves as willing recruits.
They were able to reveal how the Islamists operated with the information then passed on to the UK's intelligence services.
Security sources said information uncovered by the family of "jihadi hunters" was of "significant interest to those investigating the issue of British nationals travelling to Syria."
The fighters were subsequently targeted by coalition forces in air strikes which saw them killed across Iraq and Syria.
And last month it was revealed Hussain, who previously tried to recruit former Page 3 girl Kimberly Miners, had been killed in a US drone strike in 2017.
"Jihadi hunter" dad John, who used to run a chip shop and a newsagents, said: "This began towards the end of 2014 after the Islamic State had declared their Caliphate and it became clear that Brits were going to join them.
"A journalist friend of mine asked if I knew any Arab women who they could use as online bait to discover how the group were grooming people in this country.
"I recommended my wife’s colleague but it was too much for someone who did not want to spend a lot of time online talking to these people, so I suggested my son.
"He had just turned 20 and as far as I could see when he wasn’t working as a chef at Pizza Express he spent all his time online.
"Typical youngster, he didn’t go to bed till three or four in the morning but he knew all about how to operate online platforms and he was interested, he wanted to get involved.
"My daughter, though five years younger, was just the same."
Tasked with the mission to expose the evil recruiters, young pizza chef Chris showed incredible levels of patience and cunning.
He used social media including Twitter and the jihadis' favourite encrypted mobile apps to draw them into conversation.
Many of the plots and attempts to recruit Chris took place on apps such as Surespot and Telegram which has been linked to several Islamist attacks and described as the jihadis "choice of app".
He said: "In those early days, Twitter was like their advertising platform.
"They were all on there boasting of their success and posting terrifying videos showing what happened to those who were not with them.
"I was seeing things I did not think I would ever see in my life. The most extreme accounts, calling for attacks on the West and the like, would be shut down but then they would pop up again with new names. That is how I came across Junaid Hussain."
Junaid, 21, from Birmingham, was a computer hacker who had been jailed for hacking Tony Blair’s accounts in 2012.
He had gone to Syria to join IS and used his hacking skills to set up their "Cyber Caliphate" which attacked Western targets online and urged followers to carry out attacks.
He was destined to become third on the Pentagon’s kill list after IS’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and chief executioner Jihadi John, aka Mohammed Emwazi.
What he proposed was a suicide attack on an Armed Forces Day parade in Merton, chosen for its proximity to where Lee Rigby was brutally murdered.
More than 1,000 people, including young children, were due to attend the parade which would feature fusiliers from Lee’s regiment, serving Gurkhas and war veterans among the 250 marchers.
Boasting about how the a blast would “hit the soldiers in their own land”, warped Hussain told Chris: “They think they can kill Muslims in Iraq and Afganistan then come back to the UK and be safe. We’ll hit them hard InshAllah. By Allah you wont be wasted Akhi.”
Over the next few days he gave Chris specific instructions on how to assemble a bomb and detonator using household items such as a pressure cooker.
As the plot unfolded he asked Chris to send him photographs of the purchased items.
After that he sent a nine-page IS bomb making manual, packed with horrific ploys such as spraying the shrapnel with rat poison.
John said: "We knew that what we had was massive.
"Our contact was with The Sun and they were duty bound to inform the anti-terrorist squad of what they had.
"They wanted all our passwords, the IP address of our computers, everything. But they didn’t want it published because that would tip Junaid off that they were onto him.
"In the end, the day before the Armed Forces Parade that we were supposed to target, the Sousse massacre happened in Tunisia with dozens of Brits killed on the beach.
"The Sun then published the story. From then on our activities were known about by the authorities. They were very pleased with what we were doing."
Soon the family were talking to Junaid’s wife, Sally Jones, a 46-year-old former punk rocker and housewife from Chatham, Kent.
She had taken her eight year old son to join the Caliphate and headed up their recruitment of young western women.
Now she was urging other brainwashed followers to attack British targets and told Chris to focus on the VJ commemorations, where members of the Royal family would be in attendance.
Jones told Chris to build a pressure cooker bomb, similar to the one used during the Boston marathon terror attack in 2013, to kill possibly hundreds of innocents at the commemorations.
John added: "Junaid and Sally were the biggest propaganda arms of IS. They were the faces of IS and that was their biggest coup – getting fluent English speaking recruiters.
"Soon after we were talking to Junaid about an attack on an army parade, we made contact with Sally through one of Chris’s female accounts and she was urging us to bomb the VJ Day commemorations.
"She claimed she had three other bomb makers working for her in Britain.
"It was very significant and the authorities knew it. Until then Jones had been urging followers to join her in the Caliphate but with IS going onto the defensive, their tactics changed to encouraging supporters to stay in the West and plan attacks."
By the end of August 2015, Hussain had been killed in a drone strike, and IS began to become more wary of who they were talking to online.
Chris said: "Junaid and Sally were like the first generation of recruiters. They gave away too much information. Those who took over from them were more cautious.
"They weren’t giving out instructions and bomb manuals so quickly."
Junaid Hussain's shoes were quickly filled by other recruiters and external attack planners including jihadist Abu Isa Al-Amriki, aka Abu-Sa'ad al-Sudani.
Former Pizza Express worker Chris added: "Before we even got into conversation, he had me answer a series of questions in my own time and once that was done he said, 'Brother, now you are working for us' and then 10 further questions to be answered in 10 seconds about Islam.
"He wanted us to steal laptops and send them over along with mobile phones, diamonds, anything. He said nothing goes to waste in the Caliphate.
"He told us he had a cell ready to strike in Britain but before we could join it, he wanted us to send money over there through an agent based in London, just £20, to prove our allegiance but that was something we could not do."
Shortly after communicating with Chris, Al-Amriki and his wife were both killed in a targeted US drone strike and the story of his deadly role in recruitment and attack planning was revealed by The Sun.
By 2016, it was Chris’s little sister Sarah, then 17, who came centre-stage when roly-poly Naveed Hussain, an IS recruit from Coventry, fell in love with her profile.
Sarah said: "He could only see my eyes. But he seemed to be completely smitten. He was a pathetic character and I almost felt sorry for him.
"He wanted me to go over there and join him as his wife. He sent pictures of the room we would share and boasted about how he was hoping to get a job in their courts.
"I asked if it was as a lawyer and he replied that he couldn’t speak Arabic but added an emoji of a knife dripping with blood."
Twisted Naveed, who had also targeted Page 3 girls in his recruitment drive, was also killed in a drone strike.
The family have now exposed several plots to attack Britain and been praised by the authorities for the work they have done.
They continue to be a thorn in the side of Jihadist recruiters across the world but keep their work quiet from friends.
Sarah said: "It’s strange. When there’s a picture of your brother on the front of a national newspaper but you can’t tell any of your friends about it.
"We just keep quiet because this work is too important to be compromised by boasting about what we are doing."
John added: "For us there was huge motivation in this. IS had started to release their beheading videos, enslaved the Yazidi people, wrecked Syria and Iraq. They were simply pure evil.
"As a family of Asian origin in Britain, this felt even more personal."
Chris added: "There is a lot of racism directed at Muslims in this country and those doing it should remember that they are helping to feed IS.
"The extremists have the same goal – to make Muslims feel they cannot live in peace in the West. Countering this is a very serious undertaking and I am glad to have played a part."
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