ISIS member convicted by U.S. jury in connection with executions of 4 hostages

WARNING: This text incorporates graphic particulars of abuse.

A jury convicted a British nationwide Thursday for his position in an Islamic State group hostage-taking scheme that took roughly two dozen Westerners captive a decade in the past, ensuing within the deaths of 4 People, three of whom have been beheaded.

The jury deliberated for 4 hours earlier than discovering El Shafee Elsheikh responsible on all counts. Elsheikh stood immobile and gave no seen response as the decision was learn. He now faces as much as a life sentence in jail.

In convicting Elsheikh, the jury concluded that he was one of many infamous “Beatles,” Islamic State captors nicknamed for his or her accents and identified for his or her cruelty — torturing and beating prisoners, forcing them to combat one another till they collapsed and even making them sing merciless tune parodies. Surviving hostages testified that the Beatles delighted themselves rewriting Lodge California as “Lodge Osama” and making them sing the chorus “You’ll by no means go away.”

The convictions on all eight counts in U.S. District Courtroom in Alexandria, Va., revolved across the deaths of 4 American hostages: James Foley, Steven Sotloff, Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller. All however Mueller have been executed in videotaped beheadings circulated on-line. Mueller was pressured into slavery and raped a number of instances by Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi earlier than she was killed.

“Reward God! I am so grateful,” mentioned Diane Foley, the mom of James Foley, after the verdicts got here in. “I am so happy with the American justice system. El Shafee Elsheikh was handled with a substantial amount of mercy. He had 4 attorneys. … Hopefully we have been capable of flip this into justice, not revenge.”

She contrasted what she mentioned was the stellar work of the prosecution with what she mentioned was the inaction of presidency to deliver Foley and the opposite People residence once they have been hostages.

“After we actually wanted to deliver the complete pressure of the federal government to bear to deliver them residence, that failed,” she mentioned. “They have been deserted.”

She mentioned she hopes the case brings consideration to the greater than 60 People who’re being held hostage or wrongly detained around the globe.

Captors shielded their identities

The responsible discovering got here despite the fact that not one of the surviving hostages, akin to Edouard Elias of France, may establish Elsheikh as considered one of their captors. Though the Beatles had distinctive accents, they all the time took nice care to cover their faces behind masks and ordered hostages to keep away from eye contact or danger a beating.

Elsheikh, who was captured by the Kurdish-led Syrian Defence Forces in 2018, ultimately confessed his position within the scheme to interrogators in addition to media interviewers, acknowledging that he helped accumulate e-mail addresses and supplied proof of life to the hostages’ households as a part of ransom negotiations.

However testimony confirmed that he and the opposite Beatles have been excess of paper pushers. The surviving hostages, all of whom have been European — it was American and British hostages who have been killed — testified that they dreaded the Beatles’ look on the numerous prisons to which they have been always shuttled and relocated.

Surviving witness Federico Motka recounted a time in the summertime of 2013 when he and cellmate David Haines, who was later executed, have been put in a room with American hostage James Foley and British hostage John Cantlie for what they referred to as a “Royal Rumble.” The losers have been advised they’d be waterboarded. Weak from starvation, two of the 4 handed out in the course of the hourlong battle.

Cantlie’s whereabouts are unknown; the British authorities in 2019 mentioned they imagine he’s nonetheless alive.

They have been amongst 26 hostages taken captive between 2012 and 2015, when the Islamic State group managed massive swaths of Iraq and Syria.

Defence attorneys acknowledged that Elsheikh joined the Islamic State group however mentioned prosecutors did not show he was a Beatle. They cited a scarcity of readability about which Beatle was which, and again within the trial’s opening assertion cited the confusion about whether or not there have been three or 4 Beatles.

Prosecutors mentioned there have been three — Elsheikh and his mates Alexenda Kotey and Mohammed Emwazi, who all knew one another in England earlier than becoming a member of the Islamic State.

Emwazi, who was referred to as “Jihadi John” and carried out the executions, was later killed in a drone strike in 2015. Kotey and Elsheikh have been captured collectively in 2018 and dropped at Virginia in 2020 to face trial after the U.S. promised to not search the demise penalty. Kotey pleaded responsible final yr in a plea discount that requires a life sentence however leaves open the chance that he may serve out his sentence in the UK after 15 years within the U.S.

Baghdadi was killed in a 2019 raid.