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El Shafee Elsheikh, who was formally sentenced to life in prison on Friday for his leading role in the beheading death of an American hostage, had a somewhat whimsical nickname, the so-called “The Beatles,” which belied his evil deeds.
He was, in fact, the most notorious and high-ranking member of the Islamic State group who had been convicted in a U.S. court, prosecutors told a sentencing hearing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria.
Elsheikh and British counterparts Alexandra Kotey and Mohammed Emwazi led an Islamic State hostage-taking program that captured about two dozen Westerners a decade ago. The hostages called them the Beatles because of their accents. Their presence, always masked, arouses the hostages’ fear of the sadism they display.
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“This indictment exposes the brutal and sadistic ISIS Beatles,” said 1st Assistant U.S. Attorney Raj Parekh.
The life sentence was a foregone conclusion after a jury found him guilty of hostage-taking causing death and other crimes earlier this year.
These convictions carry mandatory life sentences. As part of a deal to secure the extradition of El Sheikh and his friend Kotay, the United States agreed not to impose the death penalty, who has been sentenced to life in prison. Emwazi was killed in a drone strike.
The convictions revolved around the deaths of four American hostages: James Foley, Steven Sotloff, Peter Cassig and Kayla Mueller. All but Mueller were executed in a beheading video circulating online. Mueller was forced into slavery and repeatedly raped by Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi before he was killed.
They were one of 26 hostages held between 2012 and 2015, when the Islamic State group took control of large swathes of Iraq and Syria.
Pareh said it was difficult to convey the cruelty of El Sheikh’s actions. “We lack this painful vocabulary,” he said, paraphrasing Dante’s hell.
Nonetheless, Elsheikh and the Beatles victims testified at Friday’s hearing and expressed their experiences. Danish photographer Daniel Rye Ottosen, who was released after paying the ransom, said the worst moments were the quiet moments during and after captivity, when he was thinking alone.
He said it was almost a relief when Elsheikh and the Beatles beat him.
“I know I can only focus on my pain, which is much easier than thinking about your thoughts alone,” he said.
Ottoson was especially close to Foley and remembered the farewell letter Foley wrote to his family to dictate to Foley’s parents after his release.
Foley’s mother, Diane Foley, said holding Elsheikh accountable at the trial sent a deterrent message to other potential hostage-takers.
“Hate really overwhelms your humanity,” she told Elsheikh on Friday, the eighth anniversary of James Foley’s beheading.
During the trial, the surviving hostages testified that they feared the Beatles’ presence in the various prisons they were constantly moving through and out of. Elsheikh and the rest of the Beatles played a key role in the hostage negotiations, having the hostages email their families with demands for payment.
They also routinely beat and tortured the hostages, forced them to fight each other and even passed out, threatened them with waterboarding, and forced them to view pictures of the killed hostages.
Elsheikh, 34, did not speak at Friday’s hearing. Elsheikh will appeal his conviction, his lawyer Zachary Deubler said. Lawyers for Elsheikh have argued that after he was captured by the Kurdish-led Syrian Defense Forces in 2018, his confession should have been ruled inadmissible due to alleged abuse.
During Friday’s hearing, Dubler limited his arguments to demanding that Elsheikh not be sent to the supermax prison facility in Florence, Colorado, where he will face solitary confinement for the rest of his life. Unless the judge recommends otherwise, Florence will almost certainly be appointed, Dubler said.
Justice TS Ellis III declined to make any recommendations to the Bureau of Prisons.
“The conduct of this defendant and his co-defendants can only be described as horrific, brutal, cruel, callous and, of course, criminal,” Ellis said.
Outside court, Mueller’s parents said they were still searching for information about her death and retrieving her remains. Karl Mueller said he could not help reflecting on the different outcomes of European hostages (freed after paying ransom) and American hostages killed because the United States refused to pay the ransom.
“Hopefully our government will be like so many others in the future, sending them home instead of leaving them,” he said.
Both Muellers and Diane Foley said they had been able to meet with Kotey, whose guilty plea required him to meet with interested families. Martha Mueller declined to comment on her conversation.
Dian Foley said she met with Kotey 3 times and it was good for her.
“I was able to share some of who Jim was, and he was able to share some of why he felt it was a war situation and his excuses,” Foley said. “But he did express some remorse, and I’m grateful for that.”
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