Two British militants believed to have been part of an Islamic State (IS) group cell notorious for beheading hostages in Syria were unapologetic in their first interview since their capture, denouncing the U.S. and Britain as “hypocrites” who will not give them a fair trial.
The men, along with two other British jihadis, allegedly made up the IS cell nicknamed “The Beatles” by surviving captives because of their English accents.
Torture and killings
The nickname belied the cell’s brutality. In 2014 and 2015, it held more than 20 Western hostages in Syria and tortured many of them. It beheaded seven American, British and Japanese journalists and aid workers and a group of Syrian soldiers, boasting of the butchery in videos released to the world.
Speaking to The Associated Press at a Kurdish security centre, the two men, El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Amon Kotey, repeatedly refused to address allegations they were part of the cell — clearly having a future trial in mind. They complained that they could “disappear” after Britain reportedly revoked their citizenship.
They were captured in January in eastern Syria by the Kurdish-led, U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces amid the collapse of IS. Their detention has set off a debate in the U.S. and Europe over how to prosecute their citizens who joined IS as the Kurds pressure the West to take them back to relieve overcrowding in prisons.
The two said the killings of the captives were a mistake but for tactical reasons.
Many in IS “would have disagreed” with the killings “on the grounds that there is probably more benefit in them being political prisoners”, Kotey said. “I didn’t see any benefit (in killing them). It was something that was regrettable.” He also blamed Western governments for failing to negotiate, noting that some hostages were released for ransoms.
Elsheikh said the killings were a “mistake” and might not have been justified. But, he said, they were in retaliation for killings of civilians by the U.S.-led coalition fighting IS. He said the militants shouldn’t have initially threatened to kill the hostages because then they had to go ahead with it or else “your credibility may go”.
The beheadings, often carried out on camera, horrified the world soon after IS took over much of Iraq and Syria in 2014.
The leader of the cell, Mohammed Emwazi, was dubbed ‘Jihadi John’ in the British media after he appeared, masked, in the videos, sometimes performing the butchery. He was killed in a U.S.-led coalition drone strike in 2015 in the Syrian city of Raqqa.
Elsheikh, whose family came to Britain from Sudan when he was a child, was a mechanic from White City in west London.
Kotey, who is of Ghanaian and Greek-Cypriot descent and converted to Islam in his 20s, is from London’s Paddington neighbourhood.
Serving in the IS cell as a guard, he “likely engaged in the group’s executions and exceptionally cruel torture methods,” the State Department said.
Is Baghdadi alive?
Kotey often cracked jokes when asked whether IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was alive, he joked that some people thought Elvis never died. They were unrepentant about belonging to IS though they said they did not agree with everything it did. Kotey said he did not think suicide bombings were permissible in Islam. Elsheikh said IS’s killing of a captured Jordanian pilot by burning him alive in a cage was “atrocious”. But they seemed dismissive of the idea that IS was egregious in brutality.
The U.S. has been pressing for the home countries of foreign jihadis in Iraq and Syria to take their nationals for trial. Britain’s Defence Secretary has said they should not be allowed back into the country.
Former captives of the cell and families of its victims have called on Elsheikh and Kotey to be given a fair trial, arguing that locking them away in a a facility like Guantanamo Bay would only fuel further radicalism.
The two denounced as “illegal” the British government’s reported decision in February to strip them of citizenship. Kotey said the fairest venue for a trial may be the International Criminal Court in The Hague in the Netherlands. “That would be the logical solution.”
