Kurds detain final two members of hostage-killing group

British men part of clan dubbed the ‘Beatles’

WASHINGTON • Syrian Kurdish fighters have detained two British men infamous for their role in the Islamic State’s imprisonment, torture and killing of Western hostages, according to U.S. officials.

The men were part of a group of four Islamic State militants known as the “Beatles” because of their British accents.

Officials identified the two men captured as Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh. They were the last two members of the group to remain at large.

The ringleader, Mohammed Emwazi, was killed in an airstrike in 2015 in Syria after a manhunt.

Known as “Jihadi John,” he beheaded U.S. and British hostages. A fourth man, Aine Davis, is imprisoned in Turkey on terrorism charges.

All four had lived in West London. Kotey, born in London, is of Ghanaian and Greek Cypriot background, while Elsheikh’s family fled Sudan in the 1990s.

Both men have been designated foreign terrorists by the United States.

The British extremists were known for their brutality. They repeatedly beat the hostages they kept imprisoned in Raqqa, Syria, formerly the Islamic State’s self-declared capital, and subjected them to waterboarding and mock executions. Emwazi was believed to have killed American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, as well as Abdul-Rahman Kassig, an aid worker. The U.S. government says the group beheaded more than 27 hostages.

According to the State Department, Kotey “likely engaged in the group’s executions and exceptionally cruel torture methods, including electronic shock and waterboarding. Kotey has also acted as an ISIL recruiter and is responsible for recruiting several U.K. nationals to join the terrorist organization.”

Elsheikh travelled to Syria in 2012 and joined al-Qaida in Syria before aligning himself with the Islamic State.

“Elsheikh was said to have earned a reputation for waterboarding, mock executions and crucifixions while serving as an ISIS jailer,” the State Department said.

Kotey, 34, and Elsheikh, 29, were detained by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led militia, which is fighting the last pockets of Islamic State insurgents in Syrian towns and villages along the Euphrates River south to the border with Iraq.

U.S. officials were informed in mid-January that the militia might have captured the men.

The SDF suspected the two men were foreign fighters and gave them access to U.S. Special Operations forces, U.S. officials said.

The Americans confirmed their identities using fingerprints and other biometric measurements. Their capture and detention was described to the New York Times by several U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because details of the case remain secret.

Cmdr. Sarah Higgins of the Navy, a Pentagon spokeswoman for detention policy issues, declined to comment.

It was not clear whether the Justice Department would prosecute the two men or when the U.S. military would take custody of them. For the FBI agents and other officials who have long worked on the case, bringing back the men to face federal prosecution would be a major victory.

But Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been an outspoken supporter of continuing to use the wartime prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the military commissions held there.

Thomas P. Bossert, the president’s chief counterterrorism adviser, has also pushed for the suspects to be sent to the military prison.

Britain, a close ally of the United States, could object to sending the men to the wartime prison, which has a toxic image abroad. It negotiated the repatriation of all nine of its citizens whom the Bush administration had brought there by 2005.

But the British government has stripped Kotey and Elsheikh of their citizenship, according to a U.S. official.

A senior U.S. official said Kotey and Elsheikh had provided valuable information to military interrogators about the remaining Islamic State leadership and support structure, which are under tremendous pressure from air and ground attacks.