One of the British-born members of the Islamic State group dubbed the “Beatles” was found guilty on a host of charges tied to a hostage-taking plot that led to the deaths of four Americans.
El Shafee Elsheikh, dubbed “Jihadi Ringo” according to prosecutors, was convicted in the Eastern District of Virginia on Thursday for his role in the deaths of U.S. humanitarian aid workers Kayla Mueller and Peter Kassig and U.S. journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff.
All four were killed in Syria while held by ISIS. Though not charged with killing the hostages himself, he was convicted of being part of their kidnapping and torture.
Elsheikh’s co-conspirator, Alexanda Amon Kotey, previously admitted to taking part in the “brutal hostage-taking scheme” against the four Americans, as well as British and Japanese nationals, and he pleaded guilty in September 2021. He faces a mandatory life behind bars when he is sentenced this month.
Elsheikh and Kotey were brought to the United States in 2020 after being captured together in 2018 by the Syrian Democratic Forces. Mohammed Emwazi was previously killed in an airstrike, while Aine Lesley Davis is believed to be imprisoned in Turkey.
The four were grimly named after the legendary Beatles rock group because of their British accents heard in monstrous hostage videos.
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The Justice Department announced charges in October 2020 against Elsheikh and Kotey, agreeing to drop the possibility of the death penalty when convincing the United Kingdom to allow the men to be extradited to and prosecuted in the U.S.
ISIS released videos in 2014 depicting the beheadings of Foley, Sotloff, Kassig, and others. ISIS fighters sent Mueller’s family an email confirming her death in 2015.
Elsheikh and Kotey previously confessed to being involved in Mueller’s imprisonment in Syria. U.S. officials have said that ISIS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi raped Mueller before she was killed. The Special Forces team that took out Baghdadi in October 2019 dubbed their mission “Task Force 8-14,” named for Mueller’s birthday of Aug. 14, 1988.
ISIS’s short-lived, self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq began during the Obama administration following the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and was marked by attempted genocide, extreme violence, crucifixions, beheadings, slavery, the subjugation of women, and the inspiration of like-minded terrorists worldwide.
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The group’s physical caliphate was largely eliminated during the Trump administration. The Islamic State’s Afghanistan affiliate is responsible for the suicide bombing which killed 13 U.S. service members in August.
