The First Step Towards Justice

Photo credit: Reuters

The indictment of Alexanda Kotey, 36, and El Shafee Elsheikh, 32, on Wednesday, October 7^th represents the first step towards achieving justice for their victims and bringing a measure of solace to their grieving families.

As members of ISIS, Kotey and Elsheikh were dubbed “The Beatles” because of their British accents. In propaganda videos made by the group, these individuals stunned the world both with their unflinching violence, as well as their fluency in English – a fact that emphasized the global scope and reach of the Islamic State.[i]  The group was known for brutally beheading their captives in Raqqa, Syria, and posting the videos of the executions online to serve as propaganda for ISIS recruitment. The leader of the cell, Mohamed Emwazi, more commonly known as Jihadi John, was killed in an American air strike in Syria in 2015.[ii] In 2017, the fourth member of the cell, Aine Davis, was sentenced to seven years in a Turkish prison.[iii][iv]

All four members of the cell at one point lived in West London. Kotey, of Ghanaian and Greek Cypriot descent, was born in London, while Elsheikh’s family is Sudanese. Both men have been designated foreign terrorists by the United States, and the United Kingdom has revoked their passports. 

Kotey and Elsheikh appeared in Alexandria at the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to stand trial for the role they played in the deaths of U.S. journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, as well as aid workers Kayla Mueller and Peter Kassig. Mueller, who was captured by ISIS militants in August 2013, was repeatedly sexually abused by former ISIS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi.[v] Kotey and Elsheikh have admitted to collecting email addresses from Mueller to be used for ransom demands.[vi] Kayla Mueller was killed in February 2015 after enduring 18 months of captivity under ISIS.[vii]

Kotey and Elsheikh were captured by American-backed Kurdish forces in early 2018. American military forces took control of them in October 2019. Criminal proceedings were stalled by the British court’s hesitancy to hand over crucial evidence to American prosecutors until Attorney General William Barr ceded that Kotey and Elsheikh would not face the death penalty.[viii]

Kotey and Elsheikh face a 24-page indictment, including allegations of four counts of hostage taking resulting in death and four additional criminal counts of conspiracy to murder and to support terrorists.[ix] If convicted, Kotey and Elsheikh would spend the rest of their lives in prison.   The group tortured their hostages by staging mock executions, forcing hostages to fight one another, administering electric shocks with a taser, ordering 20-minute beatings, and using waterboarding, stress positions, food deprivation, and choke holds.[x][xi] In 2017, the State Department accused the cell of holding captive and beheading as many as two dozen hostages from the United States, Great Britain, and Japan.[xii][xiii]

The indictment notes Kotey and Elsheikh were “‘leading participants in a brutal hostage-taking scheme targeting American and European citizens’ from 2012 through 2015.”[xiv] The cell in general, and Jihadi John in particular, struck fear into the hearts of Westerners around the world, as he sought to show British and American citizens that ISIS and its members were not as far removed from the West as many would like to think.[xv]

The families of the four American victims released a statement, calling the transfer of Kotey and Elsheikh to the American criminal court system, “‘the first step in the pursuit of justice for the alleged horrific human rights crimes against these four young Americans,’” and added that they “‘are hopeful that the U.S. government will finally be able to send the important message that if you harm Americans, you will never escape justice. And when you are caught, you will face the full power of American law.’”[xvi]