ALEXANDRIA, Virginia –
British citizen El Shafee Elsheikh was sentenced to life in prison on Friday for his role in an ISIS plot that took approximately two dozen Westerners hostage a decade ago.
Elsheikh’s hostages gave him a somewhat whimsical nickname: he was nicknamed “Beatle” along with other English-accented captors, but the nickname belied the cruelty of his conduct.
“This indictment unmasked the vicious and sadistic ISIS Beatles,” said First Assistant United States Attorney Raj Parekh, noting that Elsheikh and the other Beatles always wore masks when appearing in front of their hostages.
He is the most notorious and highest-ranking member of the ISIS group to be convicted in a US court, prosecutors said Friday at his sentencing hearing in US District Court in Alexandria. Life in prison was a foregone conclusion after a jury found him guilty of hostage-taking resulting in death and other crimes earlier this year.
The convictions revolved around the deaths of four American hostages: James Foley, Steven Sotloff, Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller. All but Mueller were executed in videotaped beheadings circulating online. Mueller was forced into slavery and raped multiple times by ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi before being killed.
They were among 26 hostages taken captive between 2012 and 2015, when the ISIS group controlled large swaths of Iraq and Syria.
The convictions carried a mandatory life sentence. The United States agreed not to seek the death penalty as part of a deal that guaranteed the extradition of Elsheikh and her friend, Alexandra Kotey, who had already been sentenced to life in prison.
Parekh said it was difficult to convey the brutality of Elsheikh’s actions. “We lack the vocabulary of such pain,” he said, paraphrasing Dante’s Inferno.
Still, victims of Elsheikh and the Beatles testified at Friday’s hearing and gave voice to what they experienced. Danish photographer Daniel Rye Ottosen, who was released after paying a ransom, said the worst moments were the moments of silence during and after captivity when he was alone with his thoughts.
He said that when Elsheikh and the Beatles beat him up, it was almost a relief.
“Now I knew that I could only focus on my pain, which is much easier than being alone with your thoughts,” he said.
Ottosen was particularly close to Foley and memorized a farewell letter Foley wrote to his family so he could dictate it to Foley’s parents when he was released.
Foley’s mother, Diane Foley, said holding Elsheikh responsible at trial sends a message of deterrence to other would-be kidnappers.
“The hate really overwhelmed your humanity,” he told Elsheikh on Friday, the eighth anniversary of the beheading of James Foley.
At trial, the surviving hostages testified that they feared the appearance of the Beatles in the various prisons to which they were constantly transferred and relocated. Elsheikh and the other Beatles played a key role in hostage negotiations, getting hostages to email their families demanding payment.
They also routinely beat and tortured hostages, forcing them to fight each other to the point of passing out, threatening them with waterboarding, and forcing them to watch footage of murdered hostages.
Elsheikh did not speak during Friday’s hearing. His attorney, Zachary Deubler, said Elsheikh will appeal his conviction. Elsheikh’s lawyers argued that his confessions should have been declared inadmissible due to alleged ill-treatment after he was captured by the Kurdish-led Syrian Defense Forces in 2018.
At Friday’s hearing, Deubler limited his arguments to a request that Elsheikh not be sent to the maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado, where he would face solitary confinement for the rest of his life. Deubler said Florence’s appointment is almost a certainty unless the judge recommends otherwise.
Judge TS Ellis III declined to make any recommendation to the Bureau of Prisons.
“The behavior of this defendant and his co-defendant can only be described as horrific, barbaric, brutal, insensitive and, of course, criminal,” Ellis said.