US court hands out life sentence to ISIS ‘Beatle’
A US court in Alexandria sentenced a Sudanese national to life on Friday for his role in beheading American hostages in Syria when he was a member of the Islamic State’s (ISIS) so-called “Beatles” group.
El Shafee Elsheikh and two Brits, Alexanda Kotey and Mohammed Emwazi, are accused of leading an ISIS team which kidnapped several Western people after the terror group controlled swathes of Syrian and Iraq land in 2014. They were called “Beatles” by hostages they were holding because of their accents as the hostages could not see their faces.
Elsheikh, who spent his early life in London, was captured by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in 2018 and transferred to the UK which agreed to hand him over to Americans on the condition that he will not be executed.
US District Court in Alexandria sentenced Elsheikh, 34, to life. The decision was welcomed by some of the family members of Americans who were kept hostage and killed by the Sudanese man’s team. They also thanked Kurdish forces for arresting him.
“I am very grateful to the Kurdish for apprehending Kotey and Elsheikh, and making sure that this moment could come. I do feel it was a very just sentence. I think just spend the rest of their lives needing to consider all they did to the people and Syria and so many innocent people. I feel it is a very just sentence, I am very proud of the Justice Department today,” Diane Foley, mother of James Foley who is among four Americans killed by the group, told Rudaw’s Diyar Kurda in front of the court.
Carl Mueller, father of another hostage, Kayla Mueller, told Rudaw that Elsheikh was not remorseful for what he had done.
“He showed no remorse, no regret, never looked at anyone, never indicated that he was remorse[ful] about anything at all. Given circumstances our government had to remove the death penalty in order to get them extradited from England which they did, and now this is a fitting punishment – it fits the crime,” he said, calling on the US government to return all hostages.
Source: Rudaw
