Terrorism The trial begins in the US against the leader of the 'Beatles' of the Islamic State
Justice is accountable to one of those responsible for torturing EL MUNDO correspondent Javier Espinosa and murdering some of his colleagues.
A popular jury in Alexandria, USA, has considered that the former British citizen El Shafee Elsheikh, 33, is guilty of all the charges against him: kidnapping and death of four Americans, journalists
James Foley and Steven Sotloff
and humanitarian workers
Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller
.
The jury deliberated for hours.
Hearing his verdict, Elsheikh, who had pleaded not guilty, didn't flinch.
He now
faces a possible life sentence
for having participated, as a jailer, in a series of crimes perpetrated by a bloodthirsty group within the self-proclaimed Islamic State.
They were nicknamed 'The Beatles' by their victims because of their British accent, though what made them truly famous was their
borderline insane sadism
, which they expressed at every opportunity.
It was a painful trial.
For several days,
relatives of the victims of the butcher Elsheikh recalled their days of suffering
waiting for news of their loved ones and receiving pressure from the Obama Administration not to try to pay the ransom demanded by their captors.
According to the newspaper 'The Washington Post', US government officials detailed the failed operation to rescue the hostages, since the IS knew about it beforehand and displaced them.
Some of the survivors described in federal court the horrific torture they were subjected to:
constant beatings until they lost consciousness, mock executions, wrestling tournaments
in which prisoners were forced to fight each other and, in Mueller's case, rapes at the hands of the Islamic State leader himself.
In all these performances, Elsheikh and two other Britons, including the considered leader
Mohammed Emwazi
-defeated in 2015- had a leading role.
'The Beatles' took their vengeful madness to the extreme of trying to turn the basements where they kept their hostages into a kind of Guantanamo.
They forced them to wear orange uniforms, mistreated them incessantly and
even created a song, 'Hotel Osama'
-with the melody of Hotel California-, which they jokingly forced them to sing.
Any disobedience or act of resistance, no matter how small, was met with unlimited violence.
Not surprisingly, Elsheikh and his companions have been described by some of the 35 witnesses, including 12 of his prisoners, as
"social psychopaths without moral limits"
.
The boss, also nicknamed
Jihadi John
, was in charge of slitting the throats of some of the Americans, including Foley, on camera.
For the Prosecutor's Office it was clear, from the first moment, that the recently convicted man actively participated in that criminal madness.
He was a jailer and responsible for contacting the families.
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