British IS 'Beatle' found guilty in US federal court

A jury at the US Federal District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, found a 33-year-old former British citizen, guilty on eight criminal counts including kidnapping, murder and membership in a terrorist organization on Thursday.

The defendant was accused of being a member of an "Islamic State" (IS) jihadist terror cell known as "The Beatles" due to the members' British accents. 

Jurors deliberated for four hours before returning the guilty verdict. The 33-year-old now faces life in prison.

European witnesses recount horrors of captivity

During the eight-day trial, the court heard testimony from a number of witnesses who described the sheer brutality of the group. All of the former hostages who testified were European, as the group executed its US and UK captives.

The guilty verdict came despite the fact that no former hostages could definitively identify the defendant as a "Beatle" because he and the others in the group took care not to show their faces and threatened abuse to those who looked them in the eye.

The 33-year-old was captured along with another former group member in 2018 by Kurdish forces in Syria as the two sought to escape to Turkey. They were eventually turned over to US forces in Iraq and flown to Virginia in late 2020 to stand trial.

Although the two men were said to have conducted electronic ransom negotiations with captives' families and home countries, the charges the defendant was convicted of related to the grisly murders of four US citizens: journalists James Foley, Steven Sotloff and aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller.

Cell known for its abuses

Foley, Sotloff and Kassig's beheadings were video taped and used for "IS" online propaganda films. Mueller was enslaved and given to "Islamic State" leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was said to have repeatedly raped the 26-year-old before she was killed.

The defendant convicted on Thursday is said to have supervised detention facilities and engaged in a "prolonged pattern of physical and psychological violence against hostages" that included water-boarding, electric shocks and mock executions.

Federico Motka, for instance, recalled a 2013 incident in which he and his cellmate David Hines were locked in a room with Foley and UK hostage John Cantlie and forced to fight each other for hours in what their captors called a "Royal Rumble," with the losers facing waterboarding.

All 'Beatles' dead or behind bars

In all, the kidnapping and murder cell is thought to have captured at least 26 hostages while operating in Syria between 2012 and 2015. During that time, the militant "Islamic State" terror group controlled large swaths of Syria and Iraq.

In September 2021, another member of the cell pled guilty to involvement in the murders of Foley, Sotloff, Kassig and Mueller. The 38-year-old faces life in prison. His plea deal would have him spend the first 15 years imprisoned in the US after which he would be extradited to the UK where he would face further charges.

A third "Beatle" member is currently serving a seven-year sentence in Turkey on terrorism charges with calls for his extradition to stand trial in the UK. Cell leader Mohammed Emwazi, known as "Jihadi John," was killed in a November 2015 US drone strike in Syria.

The conviction on Thursday is the most significant prosecution of an "IS" terrorist by the US justice system.

js/rs (AFP, AP)