Texas-born Islamic State member points to and identifies El Shafee Elsheikh as fellow jihadist he met in Syria

A self-confessed member of ISIS who pleaded guilty to running the organization’s communications for five years has taken the stand in federal court to identify British national El Shafee Elsheikh as a fellow jihadist.

Prosecutors called Omer Kuzu, 26, to testify Monday morning as the Virginia trial of 33-year-old Elsheikh draws ever nearer to a close.

Kuzu’s dramatic appearance as a brief but key witness had been shrouded in secrecy for security reasons.

This morning he raised his hand and pointed to Elsheikh where he sat, describing his clothing and identifying him as a fellow fighter whom he had met under a nom de guerre between 2014 and 2017, while Kuzu himself was a member of ISIS.

He also confirmed that a picture of Elsheikh was the image of the man he had met all those years ago.

For his part Kuzu, an American citizen from Texas, was captured by the Syrian Democratic Forces in March 2019 and returned to the US by the FBI.

At the time he was described as, ‘an American citizen radicalized on American soil.’

In September 2020 he pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and he remains in federal custody.

Elsheikh stands accused of being one of three ISIS members, known by their captives as ‘the Beatles’ for their British accents and involved in the taking of 26 hostages and the murders of US journalists James Foley and Steven Stoloff and relief workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller.

He spent 10 months in captivity in Syria and has spoken publicly of the unimaginable horrors he witnessed during that time.

During his testimony Monday, Francois told jurors how he had spoken with Foley and Kassig the day before his own release in April 2014.

He recalled the guilt that he felt on knowing that his own release was imminent while theirs was barely a remote prospect.

He said: ‘It’s difficult. You feel guilty of being freed and leaving behind you hostages that you know the fate might dreadful and they knew it too.

‘We were speaking about how you might face such a situation and we could not reassure then because we knew that it might not be okay at all.’

According to Francois, Kassig was, ‘really trying to face death.’

‘He was an amazingly strong character – very lively and trying to focus on how you face death,’ he said. ‘He was very strong. He was trying to gather all the strength to be able to face death with pride.’

As for Foley, Francois said the American was keen that he should convey a message to his mother – that he ‘loved his God’ and that he was strong in his faith and beliefs.

During his testimony jurors were shown portions of the execution videos of British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning – brief awful images of each man, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, kneeling in the desert while Mohammed Emwazi ‘Jihad John’ stands by their side threatening vengeance and death.

Francois was asked if he recognized the men. He answered: ‘Of course’ and quietly named them before describing images of Haine’s execution and Henning’s beheaded body.

The pictures were not shown in court but will be available for jurors to view should they choose to.

Dismissing Francois after his brief testimony Judge TS Ellis III told him he was now free to return to France should he wish and added: ‘Good luck to you.’

The final witness of the day, a Yazidi woman who was held hostage alongside Kayla Mueller told how she slept next to the terrified American in the squalid house in which the aid worker was made a sex slave to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Speaking through an interpreter Lea Mulla recalled how she was kidnapped and taken hostage by ISIS fighters when they came to her village in August 2014.

For Mulla it was the beginning of a hellish time during which she was taken to Syria, frequently moved, beaten and threatened by her captors and picked as one of many young Yazidi’s to become the brides of ISIS soldiers.

Mulla was just 15 when she found herself sharing a prison cell with Mueller whom she recalled as kind and with whom she tried to communicate even though their captors forbade other hostages to talk to the 26-year-old American.

According to Mulla the women were moved multiple times before arriving in a location she knew only as ‘the Dirty House’ where they were raped, enslaved and terrorized by their captors who showed them videos of the beheadings of several other hostages.

She told how Baghdadi would come in the night and take Mueller, returning her shaken and terrified in the morning. Mulla said that Mueller told her she had been raped and threatened with murder if she tried to escape.

Ultimately Mulla did escape, scrambling through a small window and climbing over a wall under cover of darkness.

She said that Mueller was too terrified of being beheaded if captured to join her but that she helped her and another young Yazidi in their bid by keeping their secret and telling them the right time to go.

Mueller had just one request of the girls before they fled, Mulla said, ‘She told me to tell the world, to tell the US, that there’s a young girl by this name that’s been kidnapped by ISIS.’

Mulla vowed that she would and kept her promise to Mueller, speaking to Americans forces following her own successful escape.

Mueller’s family sat, visibly upset, as Mulla delivered her testimony in soft, halting tones, barely audible despite the court’s silence.

Earlier, forensic audio, speech and phonetics expert Dr Richard Rhodes took the stand and told jurors that there was ‘very strong [evidence] to support’ his conclusion that incriminating voice messages he had been given to analyze had been recorded by Elsheikh.

The messages were recovered from Elsheikh’s brother’s phone and recorded on the messaging app Telegram. According to prosecutors they were in a mixture of English and religious Arabic and included references to putting heads on pikes.

Dr Rhodes compared the messages to a recording of an interview with Elsheikh conducted by Metropolitan Police in London in May 2009.

According to the expert there were ‘no significant differences’ and some ‘very distinctive features’ in the voice in both recordings that led him to conclude it was the same man.

The prosecution is expected to rest tomorrow having told the Judge that they plan to call two further witnesses.

After two weeks of intense testimony, the judge advised Assistant US Attorney Dennis Fitzpatrick to reconsider the strategy, warning that additional witnesses may be cumulative and ill advised.

Fitzpatrick pushed back and though he agreed to take the court’s words ‘to heart,’ insisted that tomorrow’s witnesses – believed to include a final released hostage – will shed new light on the government’s case.

Court will resume Tuesday morning.

Source: Daily Mail