One of “Beatles” of Islamic State Organization condemned to perpetuity in United States

Alexanda Kotey, former British national, had pleaded guilty in September, admitting his responsibility in the death of four American hostages in Syria and in the kidnapping and torture of around twenty Westerners.

Le Monde with AFP

One of the members of a group of kidnappers from the Islamic State (IS) organization, baptized the “Beatles”, was sentenced on Friday April 29 to perpetuity by a federal court in the States- United. Alexanda Kotey, 38, former British national, had pleaded guilty in September, admitting his responsibility in the death of four American hostages in Syria and in the kidnapping and torture of around twenty Westerners.

Also a member of this cell, El Shafee El-Sheikh, arrested with him by the Syrian Kurdish forces in 2018, was found guilty in April after a trying trial which had exposed their sadism in the open. His sentence will be pronounced on August 12.

The two men, for whom the death penalty was excluded due to an agreement with London, were present Friday in the Alexandria court, near Washington, where the relatives of their victims were able to address directly to them.

“You have removed, tortured and participated in the murders of good and innocent people, and you will now have to live with that all your life,” said British Bethany Haines, daughter of one of the victims. “You have lost both of you!” Added the young woman, whose father, David Haines, a humanitarian worker, was beheaded by the third member of the “Beatles”, Mohammed Emwazi, killed by a drone attack in 2015 .

This nickname had been given to the three jihadists, who grew up and radicalized in London, by their hostages because of their British accent. They left for Syria in 2012. Alexanda Kotey explained in a statement that he had joined IS to fight against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, believing that “the Islamic concept of armed jihad was value and a legitimate cause “.

” Jihadi John “

Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee El-Sheikh have been extradited to the United States since Iraq in October 2020 to appear before the American justice. They had been captured in January 2018 by the Kurdish Syrian forces, then given to the American army in Iraq.

Active in Syria from 2012 to 2015, they supervised the detention of at least twenty-seven journalists and humanitarian workers from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, from the Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Japan, New Zealand and Russia. A dozen were executed and their death had been staged in IS propaganda videos that shocked the whole world.

Among their victims, in particular, was the American journalist Steven Sotloff. Friday, his mother, Shirley, exhorted the two jihadists several times to “look at her in [the] eyes”, while describing “the unimaginable impact” of their acts on her family. “Steven’s death was like a horror film broadcast live worldwide (…) for our family, it does not take place on a screen but in our heads, every day,” she explained to them , hoping that they “think there every day of the rest of their life”.

Marsha Mueller, whose daughter Kayla died in confused circumstances after being the sexual slave of the head of IS Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, wanted them to help him understand what happened to His daughter: “We have learned certain things, stories of rape, blows, terror and horror. But I want to know the whole truth, even if it’s hard to hear (…) I need to live These horrors with her. “

The alleged chief of this jihadist cell, Mohammed Emwazi, nicknamed “Jihadi John”, who had distinguished himself by appearing all dressed in black, a butcher knife in hand, on propaganda videos, had been killed during With an American bombing on Syria in November 2015. As for the fourth “Beatles”, Aine Davis, he is detained in Turkey. He was found guilty of terrorism in 2017.

/Media reports.