According to prosecutors, Elsheikh helped take hostages in order to demand the release of ISIS fighters in prison or to collect ransom. While some were released, many of the hostages were killed by the group on camera for propaganda films. Elsheikh, the last alleged member of the terrorist cell to be tried, has been charged with hostage-taking that led to the deaths of four Americans: journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and aid workers Kayla Mueller and Peter Kassig. Elsheikh’s co-accused, Alexanda Kotey, pleaded guilty in September. Another member of the terrorist group, Mohamed Emouazi, who prosecutors say was responsible for many of the hostage beheadings, was killed in a drone strike in 2015. In their opening statement, prosecutors described the charges against Elsheikh, predicting evidence they would present to the jury during the three- to four-week trial, including interviews with Elsheikh in which he is said to have confessed to being a Beatles member. “. terrorist cell, participated in beatings and organized communications with the families of the hostages. “This is the captivity of four Americans in Syria,” U.S. Assistant Attorney John Gibbs said Tuesday, telling jurors he would hear “horrific testimony” about the hostages’ treatment and eventual death. Gibbs told jurors that Elseih was arrested by the Syrian Democratic Forces in 2018 and identified after US officials took his fingerprints and made them available in a Justice Department database. During the SDF detention, the FBI and the media interviewed Elsheikh about his time as an ISIS fighter and his role as a hostage. “He described his role in receiving e-mail addresses” for the families, Gibbs said, adding that Elseih also said he would be involved in the hostage-taking. According to prosecutors, the Americans and at least 16 other Western hostages were taken and held in at least nine different makeshift prisons across Syria, where they were beaten, tortured and, in some cases, eventually killed. Gibbs described the brutal beheadings of Foley, Sotloff and Kassing – filmed by the terrorist group – which the government will show to jurors later in the trial. According to Gibbs, Mueller was taken hostage in August 2013 as an ISIS slave and repeatedly raped by ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi before dying in what ISIS claims was an air strike in Jordan. In a relatively brief opening statement, Edward MacMahon, one of Elsheikh’s lawyers, told jurors that while the crimes were “beyond the heart and horrific,” Elsheikh was not a member of the Beatles’ terrorist cell but a “mere fighter.” of ISIS. “ The figures are “inconsistent at best,” MacMahon said, adding that testimonies from other hostage-takers would have different versions of “whose Beatle is which.” According to MacMahon, Elsheikh traveled to Syria to help people suffering under President Bashar al-Assad and was trying to protect himself and his family when he was interviewed by the US government and the media. Family members of the victims were present in the courtroom on Tuesday, including the parents of Foley and Bethany Haynes, the daughter of David Haynes – a British humanist who was killed by the group. Bethany Haines and Foley’s mother, Diane, along with many other members of the victim’s family, took notes during the opening remarks, sitting motionless and attentive as each side outlined the upcoming case. Elsheikh was also in the courtroom, dressed in a blue button-down shirt and black glasses, with a mask covering his mouth and part of his beard. During the trial, the Ministry of Justice will show jurors ISIS propaganda films, photographs of the dead, letters, e-mails between the families of the victims and ISIS, as well as witnesses who were also hostages of the group to testify. . One of the witnesses he is going to testify is a Kurd who was enslaved by ISIS along with Mueller. TS Ellis, a judge in federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia, presides over the trial.
