President Obama on Sunday denounced the beading of American Peter Kassig as “an act of pure evil by a terrorist group the world rightly associates with inhumanity.”
Kassig’s apparent killing was revealed in a gruesome video released by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
It showed a terrorist clad entirely in black, his face concealed, standing in front of a decapitated head lying on the ground.
Kassig, an Indiana native, was a former Army Ranger who converted to the Islamic faith and became a humanitarian worker on the Syrian border. He was captured by the Islamic State a year ago.
The terrorist, in the video, speaks with a British accent and accuses the United States of failing to leave Iraq.
The U.S. has stationed approximately 3,000 military advisers in Iraq, and the U.S. and allies are conducting airstrikes in the region in an effort to destroy the Islamic State.
Obama, in his statement, called Kassig by his Muslim name, Abul-Rahman Kassig.
The Islamic State’s “actions represent no faith, least of all the Muslim faith which Abdul-Rahman adopted as his own,” Obama said in the statement. “Today we grieve together, yet we also recall that the indomitable spirit of goodness and perseverance that burned so brightly in Abdul-Rahman Kassig, and which binds humanity together, ultimately is the light that will prevail over the darkness of” the Islamic State.
Kassig’s family posted a statement on his Facebook page, asking the media and other to refrain from distributing photos or videos of the beheading.
“We prefer our son is written about and remembered for his important work and the love he shared with friends and family, not in the manner the hostage takers would use to manipulate Americans and further their cause,” they said in the statement.
