'Jihadi John' suspect turns up in footage from 2011 London riots

Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, also known as "Jihadi John," speaks to a reporter during the Tottenham riots in 2011. (Nine News Australia)

New video has surfaced of British rapper-turned-suspected extremist "Jihadi John" in which the young man rails against police during the 2011 north London riots.

"Jihadi John," or Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, was an up-and-coming rapper in London’s "grime" music scene before he left the United Kingdom last year reportedly to fight with Islamic militants in Syria.

In newly released footage from Australia’s 9 News, Bary cuts in on a reporter’s interview with an eyewitness to the rioting, which followed the deadly police shooting of a 29-year-old father of four.

"Let me tell you something. I was there for three hours, ya?" Bary says to the reporter, describing a bus fire.

"The police are protecting the police station, not the people," he goes on to say.

He then accuses the police of wanting the fire to grow and spread so “the damage can look massive, innit?

"That’s all it is."

The reporter looks on with a bemused expression.

Bary, 24, is one of the prime suspects in the beheading of journalist James Foley.

In the months leading up to Foley’s death in August, Bary had posted several pictures of himself dressed in fatigues and carrying high-powered weapons. He posted a photograph to Instagram of himself holding up a severed head.

Authorities have been working to identify the militants seen on the video of Foley’s beheading, and those of Steven Sotloff, David Haines, Alan Henning and Peter Kassig.

Bary’s father, Adel Abdul Bary, pleaded guilty in federal court in New York of helping to plan the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. More than 200 people died in those attacks.