Alexanda Amon Kotey, left, and El Shafee Elsheikh, communicate throughout an interview with The Related Press at a safety heart in Kobani, Syria, Friday, March 30, 2018. (AP Picture/Hussein Malla)
ALEXANDRIA, VA. --
A jury convicted a British nationwide Thursday for his position in an ISIS 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 had been beheaded.
In convicting El Shafee Elsheikh, the jury concluded that he was one of many infamous “Beatles,” ISIS captors nicknamed for his or her accents and recognized 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 responsible discovering got here though not one of the surviving hostages may determine Elsheikh as one in all 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 threat a beating.
Prosecutors steered in opening statements that Elsheikh was the Beatle nicknamed “Ringo” however solely needed to show that Elshiekh was one of many Beatles as a result of testimony confirmed that each one three had been main gamers within the scheme.
Elsheikh, who was captured by the Kurdish-led Syrian protection Forces in 2018, finally confessed his position within the scheme to interrogators in addition to media interviewers, acknowledging that he helped accumulate e-mail addresses and offered proof of life to the hostages' households as a part of ransom negotiations.
However testimony confirmed that he and the opposite Beatles had been way over paper pushers. The surviving hostages, all of whom had been European - the American and British hostages had been all killed - testified that they dreaded the Beatles' look on the varied prisons to which they continually shuttled and relocated.
Surviving witness Federico Motka recounted a time in the summertime of 2013 when he and cellmate David Haines had been put in a room with American hostage James Foley and British hostage John Cantlie for what they known as a “Royal Rumble.” The losers had been instructed they'd be waterboarded. Weak from starvation, two of the 4 handed out through the hourlong battle.
The jury deliberated for 4 hours earlier than discovering 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.
A number of victims' relations, who had been current all through all through the three-week trial, fought again tears because the responsible counts had been learn.
“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 had been in a position to 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 carry Foley and the opposite People residence once they had been hostages.
“After we actually wanted to carry the total power of the federal government to bear to carry them residence, that failed,” she mentioned. “They had been deserted.”
She mentioned she hopes the case brings consideration to the greater than 60 People who're being held hostage or wrongly detained all over the world.
The convictions on all eight counts in U.S. District Court docket in Alexandria revolved across the deaths of 4 American hostages: Foley, Steven Sotloff, Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller. All however Mueller had been executed in videotaped beheadings circulated on-line. Mueller was compelled into slavery and raped a number of instances by ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi earlier than she was killed.
They had been amongst 26 hostages taken captive between 2012 and 2015, when the ISIS group managed massive swaths of Iraq and Syria.
Protection attorneys acknowledged that Elsheikh joined the ISIS group however mentioned prosecutors didn't 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 Alexanda Kotey and Mohammed Emwazi, who all knew one another in England earlier than becoming a member of the ISIS.
Emwazi, who as generally known as “Jihadi John” and carried out the executions, was later killed in a drone strike. Kotey and Elsheikh had 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 cut price 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.
Kotey shall be formally sentenced April 29. Elsheikh shall be sentenced Aug. 12. However on Thursday the decide within the two instances, T.S. Ellis III, ordered that Elsheikh seem at Kotey's listening to as nicely in order that he'll hear sufferer influence testimony that may offered forward of Kotey's sentencing.
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