El Shafee el-Sheikh, a member of the cruel “Beatles” of the Islamic Condition (IS) jihadist group, a mobile specializing in the capture, torture and execution of Western hostages, will be sentenced on Friday in a US court docket.
He faces existence imprisonment for the murder of four Individuals.
El Shafee el-Sheikh, 34, was arrested by Syrian Kurdish forces in 2018. He has considering that been observed guilty in April by a common jury following a heartbreaking demo that uncovered the sadism of the “Beatles” in wide daylight. .
A 12-human being jury dominated for significantly less than 6 hrs in two times right before convicting him for his function in the fatalities of the four People in america, journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and aid personnel Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller.
El Shafee el-Sheikh was arrested alongside with one more alleged member of the “Beatles”, Alexanda Kotey, a 38-year-aged previous British citizen.
The two men ended up handed about to US forces in Iraq and sent to the US in 2020 for demo.
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© Syrian Democratic Forces / AFP / Archives A portrait of El Shafee el-Sheikh furnished by the authorities right after his capture |
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Alexanda Kotey pleaded guilty in September 2021 and was sentenced to life in prison previous April by Judge TS Ellis, the exact same decide who will sentence El Shafee el-Sheikh on Friday.
One more alleged member of the “Beatles”, Aine Davis, 38, was charged and introduced ahead of a United kingdom court very last week in London after currently being expelled from Turkey.
The most famed of the team, the Englishman Mohammed Emwazi, aka “Jihadi John”, was killed by an American drone in Syria in 2015. He appeared in several movies exhibiting throats.
Propaganda video
Energetic in Syria from 2012 to 2015, the 4 associates of these “Beatles”, all radicalized in London, are accused of having supervised the detention of at least 27 journalists and humanitarian personnel from the United States, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Japan, New Zealand and Russia.
The nickname “Beatles” was presented by Western hostages to this team of British-accented jihadists.
This group experienced received a sinister notoriety by staging the execution of prisoners in unbearable propaganda video clips.
At the trial of El Shafee el-Sheikh, 10 former European and Syrian hostages experienced described the atrocities suffered at the arms of the “Beatles” as simulated drowning, electric shocks or mock executions.
This week, British law enforcement exposed that initiating the lawsuit towards the “Beatles” was like making “a puzzle of tiny parts” for 10 several years.
“We have adopted a route produced of little bread crumbs, fragments in point, of a large total of other investigations,” London law enforcement counterterrorism chief Richard Smith instructed reporters Wednesday. .
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