The childhood best friend of the Aberdeen jihadi killed by an RAF drone in Syria has said "it’s hard to say he didn’t get what he deserved in the end".

Stephen Marvin, former friend of Abdul Raqib, or Ruhul, Amin said he was radicalised in Birmingham and the last time he spoke to him he could hear gunshots in the background.

Mr Amin, 27, who moved to Aberdeen aged 10, attending Sunnybank Primary School and St Machar Academy, travelled to Syria last year before he appeared on a video urging others to leave the UK to fight for Isis.

Prime Minister David Cameron made the announcement about the drone strike.

Mr Marvin said in an interview with ITV News: "I feel sympathy for his family of course.

"It’s not their fault at all but it’s hard to say he didn’t get what he deserved in the end.

"He was my childhood best friend but he was a totally different person in the last 12-18 months so it was hard to sympathise with him, personally.”

He continued: "I spoke to him a couple of times, more for peace of mind and to see.

"I heard about him being brainwashed and all that so I wanted to speak to him and find out exactly the mind set he was in and get his point of view.

"He said he met people in Birmingham and he was spoken to there and offered to go to Syria under the promise he was allowed to leave whenever he wanted to.

"He went over and spent three months in a Koran-type camp that gets you into their type of thinking around the Koran.

"Then he went on to three months military camp after that."

Mr Marvin added that when he heard gun shots Mr Amin had said it was rebel fighters.

He said: "He was sitting on a riverbank. He told me when he was speaking. I asked him, aren’t you scared of getting shot?

"He said, if he dies, he’ll be with Allah. That kind of shocked me.

"You’re not used to hearing, especially in Aberdeen, you’re not used to hearing your friends talk like that.

"He had no fear whatsoever of death. He was confident he was going to a better place.”

He said: "He told me nothing happened in Aberdeen that would have led him on that path.”

The jihadi was the first to be identified from this country to be among the Britons to appear in the video recruitment campaign.

He was seen urging fellow Muslims to join a jihad with another man in the recording, Reyaad Khan, from Cardiff, who was also killed in the RAF drone attack.

Mr Amin, identified in the video as Brother Abu Bara' al Hindi, came to Scotland from the Sylhet District in north-eastern Bangladesh, where his father is believed to have returned.