[ad_1]
A jury convicted a British nationwide Thursday for his function 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 Individuals, 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 recognized for his or her cruelty torturing and beating prisoners, forcing them to struggle one another till they collapsed and even making them sing merciless music parodies. Surviving hostages testified that the Beatles delighted themselves rewriting Resort California as Resort Osama and making them sing the chorus You’ll by no means depart.
The responsible discovering got here regardless that not one of the surviving hostages may determine 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 threat a beating.
Prosecutors recommended 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 every one three have been main gamers within the scheme.
Elsheikh, who was captured by the Kurdish-led Syrian protection Forces in 2018, finally confessed his function 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 have been excess of paper pushers. The surviving hostages, all of whom have been European the American and British hostages have been all killed testified that they dreaded the Beatles’ look on the numerous prisons to which they continuously shuttled and relocated.
Surviving witness Federico Motka recounted a time in the summertime of 2013 when he and cellmate David Haines 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.
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 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.
They have been amongst 26 hostages taken captive between 2012 and 2015, when the Islamic State group managed giant swaths of Iraq and Syria.
Protection attorneys acknowledged that Elsheikh joined the Islamic State group however stated 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 stated there have been three Elsheikh and his associates Alexenda Kotey and Mohammed Emwazi, who all knew one another in England earlier than becoming a member of the Islamic State.
Emwazi, who as generally known as Jihadi John and carried out the executions, was later killed in a drone strike. 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 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.
Learn all of the Newest Information , Breaking Information and IPL 2022 Reside Updates right here.
[ad_2]
Source link
