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2021-09-03 Home Front: WoT
British-born ISIS ‘Beatle' due to plead guilty; Update: Former Brit admits all, gets life sentence
[PUBLISH.TWITTER]

Update from The Times of Israel at 5:30 a.m ET:
UK-born Alexanda Kotey admits to involvement in scheme to kidnap and torture Westerners, including Israeli-American Steven Sotloff, among four beheaded by group.

Alexanda Amon Kotey,
...half-Ghanaian, half-Greek Cypriot, all former British citizen, Alex was known in the press as ‘Ringo’. He recruited at least 25 of his peers in the area west of London, and gleefully beheaded captives for ISIS in Syria. His confession makes his little group sound like a bunch of Big Turbans...
37, pleaded guilty to all eight counts against him at a plea hearing in US District Court in Alexandria. The charges include hostage-taking resulting in death and providing material support to the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
group from 2012 through 2015.

He admitted guilt in connection with the deaths of four American hostages — Sotloff, journalist James Foley, aid worker Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller, also an aid worker — as well as European and Japanese nationals who also were held captive.

Britannia, which did not want to put them on trial at home, stripped them of their UK nationality.

But their transfer to the United States was made possible only after the US authorities assured London they would not seek the death penalty
in the case.

They both originally pleaded not guilty
"Wudn't me."
, but earlier this week Kotey indicated he would change his plea.

The plea deal sets a mandatory minimum sentence of life without parole. After 15 years, though, he would be eligible to be transferred to the United Kingdom to face any possible charges there.

In the plea deal, he admits that life is an appropriate sentence in the United Kingdom as well. If he were to receive a sentence of less than life there, the deal requires that he serve the rest of his life sentence, either in the United Kingdom if that country will do so, or be transferred back to the US to serve the life term.

The deal also requires him to cooperate with authorities and answer questions about his time in the Islamic State group. He would not, though, be required to testify at Elsheikh’s trial, scheduled for January.

US District Court Judge TS Ellis said Kotey had "agreed to cooperate fully and truthfully with the United States and provide the government with all the information you know about any criminal activity, not just what is in the indictment, but if you know about any criminal activity."

The deal also requires him to meet with victims’ families if they request it.

Kotey gave a somewhat detailed account of his time in Islamic State when Ellis asked him to explain in his own words what he had done.

He said he traveled to Syria to "engage in a military fight against the Syrian forces of Bashir al-Assad" and that he eventually pledged allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

"I accept I will be perceived as a radical who holds bad boy views," he said.

He acknowledged that he had participated in "capture-and-detain operations" to kidnap Foley and other Western hostages and that he led efforts to extract ransoms.

He described the acts of violence that were inflicted on the hostages as a necessary part of keeping them in line and persuading Western governments to pay ransom.

In the years after the hostages had been killed, he said he filled multiple roles within the Islamic State, including as a sniper and as director of a special forces training camp.

Kotey and Elsheikh’s four-member IS cell was dubbed the "Beatles" by their captives due to their British accents. They allegedly tortured and killed their victims, including by beheading, and IS released videos of the murders for propaganda purposes.

Alleged ringleader Mohammed Emwazi, known as "Jihadi John," was killed in a US Arclight airstrike
...KABOOM!...
in Syria in November 2015 while the fourth "Beatle," Aine Davis, is imprisoned in The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
...just another cheapjack Moslem dictatorship, brought to you by the Moslem Brüderbund...
after being convicted on terrorism charges.

Kotey and Elsheikh supervised detention facilities for hostages and allegedly coordinated ransom negotiations conducted by email, according to the US authorities. The pair also engaged in a "prolonged pattern of physical and psychological violence against hostages," they said.

Kotey and Elsheikh were "leading participants in a brutal hostage-taking scheme" that targeted American and European citizens and that involved murders, mock executions, shocks with Tasers, physical restraints and other brutal acts, the indictment alleged.

Prosecutor Dennis Fitzpatrick said at Thursday’s hearing that Kotey, Elsheikh and Emwazi were all friends at a young age in London, where they became radicalized.

A US special forces raid that resulted in the death of Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Syria in 2019 was code-named Task Force 8-14, in reference to the birthday of the young aid worker Mueller. Prosecutors say Kotey and Elsheikh worked closely with a chief front man for IS who reported to al-Baghdadi.

James Foley was kidnapped on November 22, 2012 in northern Syria with British Sunday Times journalist John Cantlie, who is still missing. A writer and videographer, Foley covered the uprising against Bashir al-Assad’s regime for various media, including Agence La Belle France-Presse (AFP). On August 19, 2014, IS posted a video online showing a masked, black-clad man beheading him in retaliation for the US strikes in Iraq. He was 40.

Steve Sotloff was captured on August 4, 2013, north of Aleppo where he was covering the refugee crisis. Originally from Miami, he was the grandson of Holocaust survivors and had dual US-Israeli citizenship. His family and the Israeli government kept his kidnapping secret for a year to try to assist his safe return. He was beheaded in early September 2014 in an execution in which Emwazi appeared. He was 31.

Kayla Mueller was working with the Danish Refugee Council when she was kidnapped in northern Syria in 2013. Mueller’s parents say she was tortured before being handed over to al-Baghdadi, who allegedly raped her repeatedly before killing her. IS claimed, without offering any proof, that she was killed in an air strike near Raqqa, Syria by a Jordanian plane in 2015, when she would have been 26.

Peter Kassig was the head of a small NGO that distributed food, clothing and medicine to Syrian refugees when he was kidnapped on October 1, 2013. In November 2014, IS grabbed credit for his execution in a video in which Emwazi appeared, standing next to a severed head. He was 26.
Posted by Fred 2021-09-03 00:00|| || Front Page|| [2 views ]  Top
 File under: Islamic State 










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