‘The freed hostages tried to protect me, but now I know the depravity my son faced’
The mother of executed journalist James Foley speaks of her struggles amid trial of IS ‘Beatle’
DIANE FOLEY shuts her eyes tight and turns her head from the screen. She strokes her husband John’s back as he bows his head low.
Sitting in the public gallery of Virginia’s federal court, they have just been made to watch something no parents should have to see – the final moments of their child’s life.
James Foley, an American journalist, was on a freelance assignment in Syria in 2012 when he was kidnapped by a group of jihadists, who would hold him hostage and subject him to torture for two years before they would film his execution and broadcast it to the world.
The families of Foley and the Islamic State’s other victims have this week been attending the trial of a British man accused of being a member of the “Beatles” IS cell that carried it out.
“Prayer is the only thing that gets me through this,” Mrs Foley, a devout Catholic, tells The Sunday Telegraph. “Without my faith I’d be a wet noodle. I’m trying hard to find some good in the horror of all this.”
The first time she saw the now infamous image of Foley – kneeling on the ground in an orange jumpsuit with a knife to his neck in the desert outside the Syrian city of Raqqa – she was at the family’s home in New Hampshire.
Eight years have passed, but the picture still holds an immense power to bring her right back to that grief-filled autumn day.
Londoner El Shafee Elsheikh is facing charges of hostage-taking and conspiracy to commit murder, becoming the most senior IS fighter ever to face justice in a Western court.
Much of what happened to their sons and daughters during their years in Beatles’ custody was known, but some of the evidence being heard by the court is new to the Foleys.
“The other hostages [who were released] have been very protective of me as a mother, not wanting to share with us how horribly our sons were tortured, starved and beaten, and that is coming out now,” she says. “What I’m realising is really just how sadistic the treatment was, and the level of depravity of the British jihadists.”
The court heard how the Beatles’ ringleader, Mohammed Emwazi, the executioner who came to be known as “Jihadi John”, had a particular dislike of Foley, who was often the one to speak out on the captives’ mistreatment.
The parents of the four American victims have forged a close bond. Each time the image of one couple’s child flashes up on the courtroom screen, another reaches out to comfort them with a wink, a smile, or a touch of the arm. They have come from all corners of America to the courtroom just outside its capital – Kayla Mueller’s family from Arizona, Peter Kassig’s from Indiana, and Steven Sotloff ’s from Florida.
“Jim was held with their sons and daughters. They were people of real goodness, they were there because they heard about the suffering in Syria,” she says. “Jim had the privilege, and now I have the privilege, of walking with these good people.”
Their road to justice has been a long one. It was not until four years after Foley’s death that Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey, another Londoner who joined IS, were captured. It was two more years before they were brought from Syria to the US to face federal prosecution. The story of Foley’s years in captivity is being told to the court by European hostages of the Beatles who were released in return for ransom.
Most of the 27 captives were eventually returned – except for the British and American. The US and UK are among the only countries in the world that have a strict policy of not allowing payment to terrorist groups.
The 71-year-old mother of five said she was threatened with prosecution if she even tried to raise her son’s $132million (£101million) ransom. She says she “had to beg” the government for information and was at times made to feel like a nuisance.
“I feel very strongly that Great Britain and the United States can do much better on this,” says Mrs Foley, a retired nurse who went on to found the James W Foley Legacy Foundation, which advocates for the safe return of hostages held abroad.
She says she had just got off the phone with Richard Ratcliffe, the Briton whose wife Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was recently released after six years in Iranian detention.
“He says Parliament is now looking at how to better serve their citizens in these precarious positions, and I applaud that,” she says. “Clearly what we are doing now just isn’t working.”
Seeing Elsheikh, 33, in court has been hard. “Jim and the others received absolutely no justice before they were condemned to death, whereas this young man is being afforded the best our country has to offer – a bright team of attorneys, he’s being well cared for and fed,” says Mrs Foley, who is due to testify herself tomorrow. “It’s a pretty stark contrast.”
Elsheikh’s lawyers claim he was a “simple IS fighter” and not a member of the Beatles.
Kotey, meanwhile, pleaded guilty in the Eastern District of Virginia last year and is awaiting sentence. “In some ways I have respect for Kotey’s courage and humility to admit his guilt,” she says. “Hopefully it will bring him some healing. I know it brought me some.”
‘Jim and the others received absolutely no justice before they were condemned to death’