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The mom of slain US aid employee Kayla Mueller testified on Tuesday on the trial of one in every of her daughter’s alleged Islamic State (IS) captors, recounting the determined pleas for her launch and tortuous negotiations.
Marsha Mueller’s emotional testimony got here on the fifth day of the trial in US federal court docket of El Shafee Elsheikh, a 33-year-old former British nationwide.
Elsheikh is accused of involvement within the murders of Kayla Mueller and three different Individuals: journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and assist employee Peter Kassig.
Marsha Mueller’s testimony got here a day after Kayla Mueller’s boyfriend, Rodwan Safarjalani, took the witness stand in opposition to Elsheikh, an alleged member of the infamous IS kidnap-and-murder cell identified to their captives because the “Beatles” due to their British accents.
Sometimes dabbing tears from her eyes, Marsha Mueller recalled how her daughter had labored at an orphanage in India and taught English to Tibetan refugees in Dharamsala earlier than going to Syria.
“She was all the time excited about serving to folks,” Mueller stated.
Kayla Mueller was captured by IS in August 2013 whereas accompanying Safarjalani, a Syrian nationwide, on a visit to a hospital in Aleppo the place he was contracted to restore a satellite tv for pc dish.
Marsha Mueller informed the court docket about electronic mail exchanges together with her daughter’s captors, who had been demanding a ransom of 5 million Euros or the discharge of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani lady who’s imprisoned in the US for the tried homicide of US troopers.
“We don’t wish to hurt her,” the hostage-takers stated in a Might 2014 electronic mail. “She is sort of a visitor with us in the mean time.”
However, they warned if the Muellers couldn’t meet their calls for their daughter would serve “a life sentence similar to Siddiqui.”
The Muellers informed the abductors they had been asking for “an astronomical sum of money from a household with restricted assets.”
In a single electronic mail, they stated Kayla’s father, Carl Mueller, had retired from the auto restore enterprise he operated in Prescott, Arizona.
They obtained a curt reply. “Retiring is not going to provide help to get your daughter again so return to work and earn some cash,” it stated.
Mueller stated the household had been informed by the US authorities that her captors “is not going to hurt a lady,” however they determined to make a private attraction to then-IS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
“Kayla will not be your enemy,” Marsha Mueller stated within the video message. “Present your mercy and launch our daughter.”
It didn’t come up on the trial on Tuesday, nevertheless it has been reported beforehand that Kayla Mueller was handed over to Baghdadi, who allegedly raped her repeatedly earlier than killing her.
In September 2014, Kayla’s captors added one other demand: a halt to US navy actions in opposition to the Islamic State.
The Muellers obtained no response to quite a few subsequent emails, and IS claimed in February 2015 that Kayla had been killed in an airstrike by Jordanian warplanes.
Throughout a break within the proceedings on Tuesday, Safarjalani, Kayla’s boyfriend, approached Elsheikh as he was being led out of court docket by US Marshals and shouted at him in Arabic that he would find yourself in hell.
Choose T.S. Ellis warned Safarjalani when the court docket reconvened that he could be thrown out if there was one other outburst.
The choose stated he was permitting him to stay within the public gallery as a result of he had solely made a “prediction” and never a “risk.”
The IS “Beatles” held at the least 27 folks in Syria between 2012 and 2015, together with quite a lot of European journalists who had been launched after ransoms had been paid.
Movies of the brutal executions of Foley, Sotloff and Kassig had been launched by the group for propaganda functions.
Elsheikh and one other “Beatle,” Alexanda Amon Kotey, had been captured in January 2018 by a Kurdish militia in Syria, turned over to US forces in Iraq and flown to Virginia in October 2020.
Kotey pleaded responsible in September 2021 and is going through life in jail.
“Beatles” executioner Mohamed Emwazi was killed by a US drone in Syria in November 2015, whereas the fourth member of the cell, Aine Davis, is imprisoned in Turkey after being convicted of terrorism.
Elsheikh has denied the costs and his attorneys declare his arrest is a case of mistaken id. He faces life in jail if convicted.
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