Скачать или смотреть British IS members face charges in US federal court

(7 Oct 2020) Two Islamic State militants from Britain appeared before a United States federal court on Wednesday to face charges in a gruesome campaign of torture, beheadings and other acts of violence against four Americans and others captured and held hostage in Syria.
El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey are two of four men dubbed “the Beatles” by the hostages they held captive because of their British accents.
A federal grand jury issued an eight-count indictment that accuses them of being “leading participants in a brutal hostage-taking scheme” that resulted in the deaths of Western hostages, including American journalist James Foley.
The charges are a milestone in a years-long effort by US authorities to bring to justice members of the group known for beheadings and barbaric treatment of aid workers, journalists and other hostages in Syria.
The men's arrival in the US sets the stage for arguably the most sensational terrorism trial since the 2014 criminal case against the suspected ringleader of a deadly attack on the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.
Videos of the killings, released online in the form of Islamic State propaganda, stunned the U.S. government for their unflinching violence.
The recordings routinely showed prisoners in orange jumpsuits on their knees beside a captor dressed in black whose native English drove home the global reach of a group that at its peak occupied vast swaths of Syria and Iraq.
The defendants are charged in connection with the deaths of four American hostages - Foley, journalist Steven Sotloff and aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller - as well as British and Japanese nationals who had been captured.
The indictment describes Kotey and Elsheikh, both of whom prosecutors say radicalized in London and set off for Syria in 2012, as “leading participants in a brutal hostage-taking scheme targeting American and European citizens” from 2012 through 2015.
It accuses them of working closely with a chief spokesman for IS who reported directly to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed in a US military airstrike last year.
In July 2014, according to the indictment, Elsheikh described to a family member his participation in an Islamic State attack on the Syrian Army.
He sent the family member photos of decapitated heads and said in a voice message: “There’s many heads, this is just a couple that I took a photo of.”
While the 24-page indictment describes Kotey and Elsheikh as coordinators of ransom negotiations conducted by email, it does not spell out their specific roles in any of the executions and other deaths.
Relatives of the four slain Americans praised the Justice Department for transferring the men to the US for trial.
Elsheikh and Kotey have been held since October 2019 in American military custody after being captured in Syria one year earlier by the US based Syrian Democratic Forces.
The Justice Department has long wanted to put them on trial, but those efforts were complicated by wrangling over whether Britain, which does not have the death penalty, would share evidence that could be used in a death penalty prosecution.

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