Captured, last of the British jihadi ‘Beatles’
THE last two British members of the Islamic State execution gang known as ‘The Beatles’ have been captured.
Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh were reportedly caught by a Kurdish militia unit working with American forces.
US officials confirmed the men were captured in eastern Syria. It is not known where they are being held – but they could ultimately be detained at Guantanamo Bay.
The pair, along with Mohammed Emwazi, 27, and Aine Davis, 33, were known as The Beatles because of their English accents.
The four Londoners were linked to a string of hostage murders in Iraq and Syria during the Islamist uprising.
Emwazi, nicknamed Jihadi John, became an IS poster boy after he beheaded captives including British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning.
Kotey, 34, and Elsheikh, 29, had been in combat along the Euphrates near the Syrian border with Iraq. They are believed to have been identified through fingerprints and biometric tests.
Former child refugee Elsheikh was a mechanic from White City in west London, fleeing Sudan with his parents when he was just five.
Kotey, from Paddington, was a fan of Queens Park Rangers and lived just two miles from Emwazi.
In January last year US authorities named Kotey as a member of the cell and said they had imposed sanctions on him. That March the State Department sanctioned Elsheikh, saying he had ‘earned a reputation for waterboarding, mock executions, and crucifixions while serving as an IS jailer’.
Emwazi had been responsible for the murders of a string of hostages, including American journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, US aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig and Japanese journalist Kenji Goto. He appeared in a series of propaganda videos for the terrorist group and became known for his executions. He is believed to have been killed by a joint US- British missile strike in Raqqa, Syria, in 2015.
The fourth member, Davis, was convicted of being a member of a terrorist organisation and jailed for seven-and-a-half years at a court in Silivri, Turkey, in May 2017. Known for their brutality, the British jihadists repeatedly beat the hostages they were detaining in Raqqa, the self-declared capital of Islamic State. Last night it was reported that the two captured Britons could be detained in Guantanamo Bay, the notorious US detention camp on the Cuban coast. It comes less than a fortnight after Donald Trump pledged to keep the controversial prison open and let new prisoners be admitted to the camp. In his State of the Union address, the US President said: ‘I am asking Congress to ensure that in the fight against IS and Al Qaeda we continue to have all necessary power to detain terrorists wherever we chase them down, wherever we find them. And in many cases, for them, it will now be Guantanamo Bay.’
‘Waterboarding and executions’