Jihadi John: Mohammed Emwazi went to same London school as two terrorists who joined al-Qaeda affiliates

The Quintin Kynaston Academy is now being investigated by authorities

The Quintin Kynaston Academy where Islamic State militant Mohammed Emwazi, who has come to be known as Jihadi John, once attended (Getty)

Mohammed Emwazi's former teachers have been interviewed by MI5 as it emerged that two other jihadists went to the same school.

Security services and education authorities are examining the Quintin Kynaston Academy, in North London, which had the man identified as Isis executioner Jihadi John among its pupils in the 2000s.

Among his contemporaries were extremists who went on to be killed fighting for militant groups abroad, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

Choukri Ellekhlifi reportedly died in Syria in 2013 after joining Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate, while fellow pupil Mohammed Sakr was killed while fighting for al-Shabaab, another splinter group of al-Qaeda in Somalia.

Both Ellekhlifli, 22, and Sakr, 27, were believed to be close friends of Emwazi, although they may have been in different school years.

Quintin Kynaston was a favourite with Tony Blair while he was Prime Minister. He used it to launch his “extended schools” scheme and visited in 2003 and 2006, when he announced his decision to resign in the playground.

The headteacher at that time was decorated “superhead” Jo Shuter, who fell from grace in 2013 after she was suspended for misusing public funds and has since been banned from teaching.

Tony Blair waves at students during his visit to Quintin Kynaston School on September 7, 2006, when he announced his resignation (Getty)

A Department for Education spokeswoman said the school, in St John's Wood, “is clearly a completely different school today” but that lessons could be learned from examining how it and others operated at the time.

"Our understanding of the challenge, and the way we monitor the ability of schools to respond to it, has advanced hugely in the past few years,” she added.

"As part of this, this government set up a dedicated Due Diligence and Counter Extremism division within the DfE and they are working tirelessly to develop our understanding of the problem and to see if and where we can offer help to schools with pupils or former pupils who have since travelled to Syria or other areas of concern.

Jihadi John was the name given to an Isis militant with a British accent seen on video beheading journalist James Foley

"The Secretary of State has asked them to review those schools where we have evidence of links with pupils who have travelled to Syria.

"The allegations about Quintin Kynaston may be historic and it is clearly a completely different school today, but I'm sure we will look back at the evidence from the time as part of this review to see if there are any lessons we can learn for the future."

A statement from the school’s current leadership said they were “shocked and sickened” at Emwazi being identified as the masked killer who allegedly beheaded hostages including US journalist Steven Sotloff, British aid worker David Haines, British taxi driver Alan Henning, and American aid worker Abdul-Rahman (Peter) Kassig.

Quintin Kynaston said it has been "extremely proactive in working with the Government's Prevent strategy for a period of time and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future".

One of Emwazi’s former teachers had previously revealed that he received anger management therapy as a secondary school pupil after being involved in fights.

"I'd say that Mohammed was a success story of our school, he went on to achieve everything that he wanted to do; he went to a university of his choice, and from the way he started in Year Seven to how he blossomed 'til he left at the end of sixth form was a huge achievement for him, so I'm very surprised,” she told Newsnight.

Jihadi John gained international notoriety in an Isis video showing him beheading James Foley (AP)

The teacher described the 26-year-old as a “lovely, lovely boy” with a “real willingness to try and succeed”.

"We'd find that he'd get very angry and worked up and it would take him a long time to calm himself down, so we did a lot of work as a school to help him with his anger and to control his emotions," she added.

Emwazi went on to graduate from a computer programming degree at the University of Westminster.

The University of Westminster, where he studied computer programming (Reuters)

He moved to England at the age of six from Kuwait and first came to the attention of MI5 in 2009, being detained with two others while travelling to Tanzania for a safari holiday.

Intelligence officers believed it was a cover for an attempt to join the al-Shabaab terror group in Somalia and his detention was revealed by The Independent in 2010.

After leaving university, Emwazi had drifted between jobs as a computer programmer and made efforts to move abroad after gaining a foreign-language teaching qualification.

Al-Shabaab fighters on training exercises near Mogadishu (AP)

Campaigners from the human rights group Cage claimed Emwazi had become the subject of a campaign of harassment by MI5 to try to persuade him to become an informant before his escape and he wrote in emails that he felt “imprisoned and controlled by security service men”.

Additional reporting by PA