Isis ‘Beatle’ executioner jailed for life

THE daughter of a Briton killed by an Islamic State fanatic in the terror group known as The Beatles confronted him in the dock after he was given life in a US jail yesterday.

Bethany Haines walked up to Alexanda Kotey in the Alexandria, Virginia, court and pointed her finger as she said: ‘Why don’t you go rot in hell.’

Kotey, 37, did not react and walked out of the room where he and El Shafee Elsheikh, another member of gang, had been forced to listen to agonising victim impact statements. A dozen people whose relatives died at their hands told them they were ‘cowards’ and ‘monsters’ in raw, emotional comments.

Kotey, pictured, who was born in the UK, admitted eight charges of kidnapping, torturing and executing hostages in Syria between 2012 and 2015.

Elsheikh, 33, was convicted after a trial last month and will be sentenced in August.

In sentencing Kotey, Judge TS Ellis called his conduct ‘egregious, violent and inhuman’. He gave Kotey eight concurrent life sentences. The judge said the victims – all aid workers and journalists – were ‘undeniably heroes’.

The Beatles, who got their name because of their British accents, horrified the world with their propaganda videos where victims were paraded in orange jumpsuits before being beheaded.

Miss Haines, 24, was 17 when her father David, 44, a former RAF worker from Perth in Scotland was executed in 2014 having been captured while doing aid work. ‘Celebrating birthdays or Christmas is not an enjoyable experience for me anymore,’ she said. ‘My dad should be celebrating with me, but instead he is in a mass grave in the hills of Raqqa. He hasn’t been laid to rest, he was dumped like a bag of rubbish’.

She added that Kotey and Elsheikh had not ‘expressed one ounce of remorse for their actions’.

Another Beatle, Mohammed Emwazi, was killed in a 2015 drone strike while a fourth, Aine Davis, is serving a prison sentence in Turkey.