Many videos of beheadings by the Islamic State and al Qaeda have appeared online lately. The latest was a video published on November 16, 2014 showing the severed head of 26 year old American Air Force Ranger. Authorities are using voice and facial recognition techniques to identify the man behind this video and other previous videos including the highly publicized killing of the American journalist James Foley.
Linguists are using voice prints of the man on videos and compare all available videos of beheadings. So far they have identified the accent to be of a multicultural man from the London area. They are also saying that the man is deliberately paying more attention to pronunciation of p’s and q’s in order to hide his true identity. Even though “Voiceprinting” technologies are not perfect such as finger print or DNA but many Western countries use it to identify suspects when there is no other evidence.
Pictures on Twitter and Facebook are also valuable resources for investigators who are using photo technologies to identify Jihadi John. Estimated height, weight, eye color and others will also be used. Various computer programs and software are assisting investigators with their work.