Syria’s civil war was raging in March 2013 when black vehicles cut off an Italian aid worker’s car in the north of the country. Masked gunmen forced Federico Motka and a colleague into the trunk of a car and sped off.
“Welcome to Syria, you mutt,” Motka recalled one of the captors ominously telling the aid workers in British-accented English, before they were driven to a camp of Islamist militants who were battling the Syrian regime.
This was the beginning of 14 months of torment for Motka and other foreigners held by a group that would soon be known worldwide as the Islamic State. In Alexandria federal court, Motka testified that he grew to fear the British-accented man and two others from England the most. Captives dubbed them “the Beatles.”
During the only U.S. trial for a member of the infamous terror cell named after the British rock group, Motka and other hostages have offered searing testimony about their captivity. El Shafee Elsheikh was convicted Thursday for his role in the kidnapping and deaths of four Americans — journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller.
In the eight years since the Islamic State horrified people around the world by beheading humanitarians and reporters on camera, many of the witnesses have shared their stories in books and media interviews. But this month’s trial was the first time they came together to describe their psychological and physical anguish in detail, to a group of strangers who would decide whether U.S. prosecutors had correctly identified one of the tormentors. And they did so sitting a few feet from Elsheikh, who denied responsibility despite previous confessions.
Over several days, family members of the victims described for jurors the excruciating wait for word of their loved ones and the heart-rending news of how they died. Authorities detailed a U.S. military raid to try to save them. Freed hostages provided a harrowing look at their struggle to survive.
“The Beatles” gained a reputation for depravity even in an organization that made cruelty its calling card.
“They were all extremely violent and always sadistic,” testified Didier Francois, a French journalist kidnapped in June 2013.
They repeatedly invoked the U.S. camp at Guantánamo Bay, saying they wanted to “re-create the conditions” and the torture of detainees there, the hostages said. They put the hostages in orange jumpsuits, waterboarded them and shocked them with electric wires. They gave the emaciated captives dog names and forced them to fight each other for sport. They beat them until their bones broke and their teeth were knocked out.
They were always masked and forced the captives to kneel and face the wall when they were in the room. John Cantlie, a British photographer who was kidnapped with Foley, suggested the names Ringo, John and George as a way for the hostages to discuss their tormentors.
For years, authorities had said there had been four “Beatles,” but at trial, hostages and an FBI agent testified that there were only three. George was the leader; Ringo and John were “the henchmen.” Prosecutors say Elsheikh was Ringo, which he denies. But hostages said the three always worked together.
Mueller and Sotloff were taken on the same day in August, both within a day of arriving in Syria. At age 30, Sotloff was already an experienced Middle East correspondent, having broken the news of the Benghazi attack in Libya.
“Just listen, don’t talk,” Sotloff told his father in his last call home to Miami. “I’m planning on crossing over” into Syria. He said to call one of his colleagues if he wasn’t in touch in three days. In less than two, the colleague called his parents with news: “The bad guys got him.”
Mueller, about to turn 25, had volunteered across the globe after graduating college early “to get out and start helping people,” as her mother, Marsha Mueller, testified. In 2010, she crashed on the couch of a Syrian expatriate in Cairo named Rodwan Safarjalani; by 2013 they were living together in Turkey.
Safarjalani would regularly go into Syria to document the civil war, publishing photos and reports under an alias. He took Mueller along for what he believed would be a brief trip to help Doctors Without Borders. The next day, he said, they were forced off the road and into a van.
“Don’t worry, it’s just a mistake,” Safarjalani whispered to Mueller from under the blanket covering his face, he testified. “For sure they will set us free.” He thought they were rebels who would realize he also opposed the government.
But all they wanted to know was why he was with an American woman. The captives were taken to an abandoned hospital. After days of being beaten with wires and chains and given electric shocks, Safarjalani testified that he denied knowing her and was released.
Safarjalani said he later made contact with ISIS leadership and appealed for Mueller to be set free as his wife. But when he was allowed to meet with her, she told the truth — they were not married. Mueller had to stay.
‘Welcome to the Hotel Osama’
Francois testified that he was taken early on to the abandoned hospital, where French ISIS guards deprived hostages of water for so long that some started hallucinating and drinking their own urine. But when he was transferred to another makeshift prison, he met Cantlie and Foley, who were shocked to be allowed to speak at all. That’s when Francois learned about the “pure terror” of the Beatles.
Whenever the Beatles came through, the survivors testified, they would complain that other guards had given the prisoners too much food and comfort. They beat the captives until some asked for death; two Beatles would hold a captive in the middle of the room while the third used him like a punching bag. But beyond the physical pain, Francois testified, “They would always try to break your mind.”
French journalist Nicholas Henin said the three captors made the hostages sing a song called “Hotel Osama” to the tune of the Eagles’ hit “Hotel California,” with lyrics that referred to the beheading of an aid worker in Iraq: “Welcome to the Hotel Osama, you will never leave. If you try, you will die.”
Motka testified that he and his colleague were at one point placed in a cell with Foley and Cantlie for what the Beatles described as a “royal rumble.”
Motka said the malnourished captives were ordered to fight each other. The Beatles did a sports broadcaster-style play-by-play as the emaciated men punched at each other. Some passed out.
“We were so weak and shattered we barely had strength to lift our arms,” Motka told the jury.
Foley was given particularly harsh treatment, survivors testified, because he was always the first to speak up when they needed more food or water.
Kassig joined the hostages in October 2013. The former Army Ranger was captured on his way to eastern Syria, where he and his friend and fellow aid worker Mohammad Almahmoud planned to deliver medical supplies and gifts for children.
They were separated by armed, masked English speakers, and the guards demanded to know why Almahmoud was with an American, he testified.
Finally he was given a choice — to be beheaded or shot. He chose the gun, because it would be quicker. He hadn’t been able to lie down for days.
“My last wish was just to rest,” he testified.
Instead of execution, Almahmoud was set free, but he said he felt and still feels no relief that he was released and Kassig was not.
“For eight years, the guilt is surrounding me every night, every day,” Almahmoud said. “The guilt is eating my brains.”
‘GET THE CASH’
For months, the families of the hostages did not know whether their loved ones were alive.
“There was a deafening silence,” Foley’s mother, Diane Foley, testified.
Foley was kidnapped in November 2012, and it was over a year before his parents got their first ransom demand, via email.
“We have James,” read the email that was among several messages and videos shown in court outlining demands on the families and their increasingly desperate responses. “He is our friend and we do not want to hurt him. we want money fast.”
The other families said they got similar messages in December 2013. At first, they were hopeful and relieved. They were given a chance to ask things only their children could answer to verify their identities — about youthful injuries, favorite movies, weddings and funerals.
But the demands made for the release of the American men were extraordinary — freedom for prominent Muslim prisoners or 100 million euros. For Mueller, they wanted 5 million euros.
The cost was “more than we could earn in several lifetimes,” Mueller’s parents wrote the kidnappers. The U.S. government does not pay ransoms. But even when they tried to raise money on their own, the Foleys and Muellers said they were threatened with federal prosecution. An Obama administration official in 2015 said later that the government “did not do right by these families.”
European governments and nonprofit entities were willing to pay, and as European prisoners were released in the spring of 2014, they brought out messages from the remaining hostages. When the Spanish journalist Marcos Marginedas was let go in March, he testified, one of the Beatles told Foley, “Touch Marc, because that’s the closest you’re going to be to freedom in your life.”
Over and over, according to emails shown in court, the American families told the kidnappers that they did not have support from the U.S. government, foreign policy influence or access to millions of dollars. Their children were not just innocent, they said; they were unusually good. It was their compulsion to help the most desperate people in the world that had led to their captivity.
“Kayla is not your enemy,” Mueller’s parents wrote. “Kayla is just a young girl interested in humanitarian work and has devoted her life to helping others.”
The kidnappers, according to court evidence, replied, “Stop wasting your time. GET THE CASH.”
‘Terrifying and confusing’
On July 3, 2014, U.S. forces staged a late-night raid on the ISIS facility, an FBI agent testified. U.S. forces wrested control of the prison, killing three ISIS militants, but no captives were found. Soldiers found “Kayla” scratched on one wall. The hostages had been moved.
By the time of the raid, the Foley family had not heard from the kidnappers in eight months. When an email finally came later that month, Diane Foley was in Paris seeking the support and information she could not get in the United States.
“In my clueless state, I was happy to hear from them,” she testified. “I ignored what they said.”
It was not a message for her but for the U.S. government. The “price of your bombings,” they declared, will be “the blood of the American citizen, James Foley.”
This is “terrifying and confusing,” Foley’s father wrote back. “James is in no way affiliated with the U.S. government. … The government is not helping us.”
No response.
Seven days later, a video was released of Foley, beheaded on camera by a masked man later identified as “Beatle” Mohammed Emwazi.
Diane Foley clung to the hope that the video “was some cruel, sick joke,” until President Barack Obama confirmed her son’s death in a news conference that night.
Sotloff appeared in the video, a knife at his throat. For over a year, his parents had said nothing about their son’s disappearance, following the directives of both ISIS and the U.S. government. Now his mother made a direct appeal to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
“Be merciful,” she begged, calling her son “an honorable man.”
In response, the Sotloffs got what was delivered as “An audio message from Steven!” In a flat voice, Sotloff read Islamic State propaganda. “Mom, I do not have much time,” he said. “I love you.”
A day later, Sotloff was beheaded. The text of the call, the last time his parents heard his voice, was published in an ISIS magazine.
Kassig knew he would soon meet the same end.
“He was trying to gather all the strength he had to face death with pride,” Francois said of the last night he spent with Kassig. “That was very important to him.”
He penned a note, thanking his parents for all they had done for him and said he knew they loved him “more than the stars.” He said they could “seek refuge and comfort” in knowing he died trying to alleviate suffering in Syria.
Kassig’s severed head appeared in an ISIS video on Nov. 16, 2014.
The Muellers kept emailing their daughter’s captors, but said they got no response for five months. The last email, just before Sotloff’s death, had demanded “the immediate halt of ALL military activities by your government.”
Mueller had been moved from prison to the home of a senior ISIS member, where she was raped repeatedly by the group’s leader Baghdadi. That account came from fellow captive, Lia Mulla, a member of the Yazidi minority group who testified that she was kidnapped in Iraq and separated from her family at age 15. She said she and Mueller were trapped together, beaten and forced to watch the video of Foley’s death.
Baghdadi “threatened that if she tried to run away, they would kill all of us,” Mulla testified. Mulla escaped in late 2014, but Mueller was “afraid that if she was captured … she would be beheaded.” She asked Mulla “to tell the world, to tell the U.S.” where she was.
Mulla’s information led to another deadly raid, in May 2015. But three months earlier, ISIS tweeted that Mueller had died in a Jordanian airstrike, a claim that is disputed. Two days later, the same email address that had demanded ransoms sent her parents pictures of her body. The militants said that they would send along images of her personal effects. They never did.
"captivity" - Google News
April 13, 2022 at 02:14AM
https://ift.tt/TR0BKx7
Hostages have offered searing testimony about their captivity in the only US trial for a member of an infamous terror cell. - The Washington Post
"captivity" - Google News
https://ift.tt/sYZFjhe
https://ift.tt/T1bKnJq
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Hostages have offered searing testimony about their captivity in the only US trial for a member of an infamous terror cell. - The Washington Post"
Post a Comment