ISIS 'Beatle' Jihadi Ringo begs to return to UK with secret wife and 3 children

Britain’s most senior Islamic State terrorist still alive, Alexanda Kotey, has a family in Syria – and he wants them to live in the UK.

Kotey said he has a Syrian wife and three girls, aged five, three and one.

Gaunt and exhausted, 35-year-old Kotey apologised for his crimes but said he is “grateful” for his time in IS.

He said he is thankful because – overlooking the terror group’s unimaginable bloodshed and carnage – it led to him getting a jihadi bride.

Some women were forced to wed fighters but others saw it as an honour.

Kotey – dubbed “Ringo” in the notorious “Beatles” cell, which is thought to have participated in the killing of at least seven hostages – also claimed he is as “British as anyone”.

In our interview with him in prison, he admitted abusing Western prisoners before they were beheaded.

He claimed he regrets joining IS but, during the conversation in northern Syria, Kotey failed to completely hide his sinister side. He said of the beheading videos: “I didn’t condemn it. That was the environment.”

He said that when he saw Jihadi John behead Westerners, he disapproved but merely asked: “Is there no other way to deal with these people?”

These are weak words that Kotey knows would make no difference to the bloodthirsty executioner who had become a close friend.

When asked if he would have beheaded people, Kotey replied: “I can’t say to be honest… I can’t say I agree with it and I don’t know what I would do in that situation…

“Obviously if there was a gun put to my head, I definitely… I wouldn’t know… I would do.”

He added he and other IS fighters laughed at the Jihadi John videos.

Kotey said: “Nobody thought they were beneficial in any way.

“We used to mock them, we would ridicule them…We would laugh at the state, obviously not laughing at the beheadings, but this was all staged.”

I demanded to know why he was laughing at the production values, given the content was so horrific.

He replied, grinning: “I remember looking at beheading videos from Chechnya… this was playground stuff.”

He added he watched a video of the IS beheading of British worker Ken Bigley, who was murdered in Iraq in 2004. Kotey said: “I saw this in the UK. What it did – it replaced Hollywood.

“I guess this is entertainment, unfortunately. There’s a large portion of people who see it as entertainment.”

Officials only confirmed the interview was going ahead five minutes before Kotey walked in.

Gone was the chest-sticking-out confidence he showed months ago when he first appeared and ranted about US-led bombings. IS excused its violence by saying it is comparable to Coalition attacks on jihadi targets, said to have killed many civilians in cities such as Raqqa and Mosul.

Coalition commanders admit civilians died, but IS has hidden fighters among the civilian population.

Kotey has defended IS atrocities. Now he is turning on the charm, admitting only to smaller crimes and distancing himself from IS leaders.

Many of the Western prisoners were beheaded after months of abuse.

I asked if he abused prisoners, and he replied: “Er, no. If you mean in the case of torture.” “You didn’t beat them up?” I asked. “Erm,” he replied.

“Did you ever punch prisoners?”

“Erm, probably I would have hit them, no punch, maybe yes, a slap or something, yes… Hitting is prison.”

He mentioned British aid worker Alan Henning, who was kidnapped in Syria and beheaded by Jihadi John in 2014. Kotey said: “Of course I have regret and this standard that they were kept in – the fact that even at the time, people clearly they had come for, to help like, erm… Alan.”

He talked about being a sniper, and I asked him if he has ever killed anyone. He said: “No, never.” It was hard to resist replying: “Then you must have been a rubbish sniper.”

Earlier an official told us: “This guy is very clever – don’t fall for it.

“He is very careful what he says and I do not believe he has given up his extremist views. He is dangerous.”

Kotey deployed control and subtle mind games, trying to appear polite.

He passed me tea, smiling, and asked “how many scoops of sugar?” while discussing beheadings, hangings and gay people being flung from rooftops in IS’s former HQ of Raqqa. Thousands of locals are thought to have been killed in the city during the terrorists’ twisted five-year reign there.

Watched in the cell by a Kurdish security officer, Kotey explained his suspicious sudden cynicism towards IS, telling me: “My main regret is in joining any jihadi orientated organisation or group in Syria or anywhere.

“I mean, I don’t want that to be misinterpreted as a lack of gratitude as to what occurred. Here I married and had children so it would be very ungrateful.” He said he has a baby girl who had not been born when he last saw his wife, who he packed off to her family in wartorn Aleppo.

Kotey – who was seized and jailed by Western-backed SDF troops in 2017 north of Raqqa as he tried to flee to Turkey to escape the Coalition-led onslaught against the terror group – is also believed to have children in the UK. Asked exactly where his wife is, he said: “I would like to know myself. I don’t know.

“I know I had a baby daughter and she is my third daughter from my wife.

“I have not been allowed access to communicate with them.

“I prefer not to give her name. My kids’ names are oldest Mariam, five, Sajida, three, and the youngest is a year now – I don’t know her name.

“I sent my wife out before I left. She joined her… family in Aleppo. We were married since the beginning of 2013. We’ve been married for six years.”

He said he believes he will be free one day. When asked if he will see his children again, he said: “I like to think so, yes.” Kotey, half Ghanaian and half Greek Cypriot, said he learned his wife contacted his mum in London.

He added he wants his wife to move to the UK, an ambition which is almost impossible given he has been stripped of his British citizenship.

Kotey said: “I know they have made some kind of contact back to the UK which got put on hold due to some kind of legal issue. There was an attempt to make contact with my mother which got cut, legal issues.”

He added: “As far as I’m concerned I am British and I’ll remain British. To say I am not British is a big, bold statement or that anyone is more British than me because I made some mistakes – that’s also a big statement.”

We got into a debate about the IS perversion of Islam, and after he began to rant, I told him: “I am talking about throwing homosexuals from roofs – hanging people in the street…

“There’s no book where these horrors are advised… the hangings, beheadings, torching of pilots in cages.” But he said: “You can find a classical scholar who will justify it.”

Finally, we asked him what he would say to a 15-year-old Kotey whose ambition is to travel abroad for jihad, and he replied: “I would strongly advise him against it.”