Terrorist, cruel executioner, El Shafee el-Sheikh will spend the rest of his life behind bars: member of the "Beatles", a cell of the jihadist Organization Islamic State (OEI) specializing in the capture, torture and execution of Western hostages, he was sentenced on Friday August 19 to life imprisonment.
The sentence was pronounced by a court in Virginia, not far from Washington.
The 34-year-old man, wearing a beard, large glasses and a mask, remained impassive as the decision was announced in a court in Alexandria, near the capital Washington.
El Shafee el-Sheikh's actions were "horrific, barbaric, brutal, cruel and, of course, criminal", said federal judge Thomas Selby Ellis, while setting out his decision: eight concurrent life sentences for the murder of four Americans.
His lawyers have indicated their intention to appeal.
He was arrested by Syrian Kurdish forces in 2018. He has since been found guilty in April by a popular jury after a grueling trial that exposed the sadism of the "Beatles" in broad daylight.
Another "Beatles" already sentenced to life
A 12-person jury deliberated for less than six hours over two days before convicting him of his role in the deaths of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff as well as aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller.
"This trial has exposed the atrocious crimes against human rights that you have committed," said Diane Foley, the journalist's mother, eight years to the day after IS released the video showing his beheading.
"Your hate crimes did not prevail."
El Shafee el-Sheikh had been arrested along with another alleged member of the "Beatles", Alexanda Kotey, a 38-year-old former British national.
Both men had been handed over to US forces in Iraq and sent to the United States in 2020 to stand trial.
Alexanda Kotey pleaded guilty in September 2021, and was sentenced to life in prison last April by the same judge, Thomas Selby Ellis.
Another alleged 'Beatles' member, Aine Davis, 38, was charged and brought before a UK court last week in London after being deported from Turkey.
The most famous of the group, the British Mohammed Emwazi, alias "Jihadi John", was killed by an American drone in Syria in 2015. He appeared in multiple videos showing throats.
A decade of investigations
Active in Syria between 2012 and 2015, the four members of the "Beatles", all radicalized in London, are accused of having supervised the detention of at least 27 journalists and humanitarian workers from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Japan, New Zealand and Russia.
The nickname "Beatles" had been given by Western hostages to this group of jihadists with a British accent.
This group had gained a sinister notoriety by staging the execution of captives in unbearable propaganda videos.
At the trial of El Shafee el-Sheikh, ten former European and Syrian hostages had described the atrocities suffered at the hands of the "Beatles", such as simulated drowning, electric shocks or mock executions.
This week, the British police revealed that mounting the case against the "Beatles" had been akin to building for ten years "a puzzle of very small pieces".
"We have followed a path of small breadcrumbs, fragments in fact, from a huge amount of other investigations," the head of the London police's counter-terrorism division told reporters on Wednesday. , Richard Smith.
With AFP
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