US judges an Islamic State terrorist for the execution of Westerners

The justice of the United States (USA) sits in the dock of the federal court of Alexandria, in the state of Virginia, the member of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, Shafee the Sheikh, 33, accused of being part of the cell that kidnapped, tortured, and executed western hostages. The prosecution maintains that El Sheikh was one of the four members of those known to the hostages like the “Beatles”because they all spoke English with a British accent.

The quartet of terrorists, active from 2012 to 2015, became known worldwide by exhibiting the beheadings of some of the kidnapped people in propaganda videos. Among the victims executed and for whose murder the Sheikh is tried are the journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloffas well as humanitarian workers Kayla Mueller and Peter Kassig.

The “Beatles” are also accused of the detention of at least 27 hostages from fifteen countries among which are the United Kingdom, Spain, Japan, France, Denmark, New Zealand, Peru.

Some of the hostages have been called to testify to recount the abuses suffered during their detention. One of them is Marc Marginedas, the journalist from EL PERIÓDICO CATALUNYA who was held captive for six months, from September 2013 to March 2014, and who this Tuesday gave his testimony. The reporters were also captive Javier Espinosa and the photojournalist Ricardo García Vilanova.

In his opening statement to the jury, prosecutor John Gibbs said that El Sheikh “participated in a brutal plan hostage-taking” that included horrific acts of torture, such as simulated drowning, forced fights between them, electric shocks to the torso and limbs, deprivation of food or sleep, among others. “We do not intend to publicly display the video or photographs & rdquor; of the beheadings that the members of the popular jury, made up of six people, will see during their deliberations, Gibbs said.

El Sheikh’s lawyer, Edward MacMahon, for his part, bases his defense on the fact that the “Beatles” shared similar British accents and features, and the discrepancies in the testimony of the released hostages mean that their client, who pleads not guilty, could not be conclusively identified as a member of the terrorist cell. MacMahon said that during the trial he was not going to “minimize the violence suffered by the hostages, which was horrible & rdquor ;, but to show that the Sheikh “has no legal responsibility” in what he is accused of.

The Sheikh was captured by Syrian Kurdish forces along with Alexanda Kotey, another member of the “Beatles” in January 2018. Both were handed over to US forces in Iraq. Two years later they were stripped of their British nationality and transferred from Iraq to the United States, after Washington promised not to seek the death penalty against them.

Kotey pleaded guilty in September 2021, hoping to be able to serve part of his sentence in the UK. The sentence will be known this April. The other two members, Mohamed Emwazi, who was the one who made the biggest impression by appearing armed with a butcher knife in the videos showing the executions of hostages, died in a US bombing in 2015while Aine Davis, is in prison in Turkey, convicted of terrorism.

The trial is expected to last three to four weeks.