A former British citizen accused of being one of the “Beatles” terrorists claimed during the opening of his trial yesterday to be “a simple Isis fighter” who was not a member of the gang that tortured and murdered western hostages in Syria.
American lawyers defending El Shafee Elsheikh said he went to Syria to fight for “suffering Muslims” and was wrongly identified as one of the four men with British accents described by surviving hostages as “utterly terrifying”.
The gang horrified the world in 2014 and 2015 by releasing a series of slickly produced videos showing hostages being beheaded by “Jihadi John”, the British terrorist Mohammed Emwazi, after their governments refused to meet demands for large ransoms and the release of Isis prisoners.
It came at the height of Isis’s territorial power in Syria under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed in a US raid in 2019 after the self-proclaimed caliphate was largely recaptured.
Elsheikh, 33, who grew up in west London but is now stateless after being caught in Syria in 2018 and stripped of British citizenship, denies eight charges related to the capture, detention and deaths of four Americans and others, including two British aid workers.
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Smartly dressed in a blue shirt and black trousers and wearing glasses and a cloth mask over his long beard, Elsheikh sat impassively in court in Alexandria alongside his defence team and avoided eye contact with the jury of seven women and five men.
Elsheikh “unquestionably did provide services to Islamic State at some time, there will be no doubt about that,” Ed MacMahon, his lawyer, said. The US is paying for Elsheikh’s legal defence.
“Many other young British Muslims did travel to Syria . . . they shared many of the same characteristics and accents,” he said, addressing the jury. “You are going to have to decide whether these identities are correct or not.”
MacMahon said the evidence would be “inconsistent at best” that Elsheikh was a member of the group that became known as the Beatles. They made sure they were heavily masked at all times when in the presence of hostages, he said.
The gang were responsible for torturing and beheading James Foley, 40, Steven Sotloff, 31, and Peter Kassig, 26. An American human rights worker, Kayla Mueller, was also captured and kept as a sex slave for Baghdadi before images of her dead body were emailed to her parents. Two British aid workers, David Haines and Alan Henning, were also beheaded.
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The parents of all four American victims sat together in court yesterday, as prosecutors outlined the grim details of their deaths. They were joined by Bethany Haines, daughter of David.
The deaths were “horrible, despicable and senseless acts; there will be no debate in this case that that is true,” MacMahon said. “What is in dispute, and what you must decide, is whether Mr Elsheikh bears legal responsibility for any of these horrific acts.”
MacMahon said that the jury would hear media interviews with Elsheikh in which he “appears to make admissions of involvement in terrorist actions” but said the context was crucial and he was saying anything “to protect himself”.
MacMahon added: “Evidence of Mr Elsheikh’s involvement with the Beatles will be inconsistent at best. You will hear many different accounts of who is Ringo, who is John and who is George and may be Paul.”
As if to underline potential confusion over the identity of Elsheikh, prosecutors opened by vowing to identify him as Ringo, although he has previously been referred to as “Jihadi George”.
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Prosecutors told the jury that they would prove that Elsheikh was a member of the gang of Isis terrorists who “seemed to enjoy and take satisfaction” from beating western captives, many of whom were later murdered.
John Gibbs, from the US Attorney’s Office in Alexandria, said that Emwazi, Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey, who has already pleaded guilty in the same court and is awaiting sentence, “played a central role in a brutal hostage-taking scheme that resulted in the deaths of American, British and Japanese hostages as well as others”.
The three British men, who were at all times heavily masked, were “utterly terrifying” and “acted as if they had known each other for a long time”, he added.
The prosecution did not refer in their opening statement to the supposed fourth Beatle, Aine Davis, 38, who was captured in Turkey and imprisoned there on terrorist charges.
The trial is expected to last three to four weeks. Elsheikh faces a life sentence if convicted.
Jihadists who turned their backs on the West
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Mohammed Emwazi, known as Jihadi John, the group’s leader, was killed in a US drone strike in 2015, aged 27. Born in Kuwait, he moved to west London aged six. He changed his name to Mohammed al-Ayan and in 2013 travelled to Syria. He was identified by his voice as the knife-wielding man who showed only his eyes in Islamic State decapitation videos.
El Shafee Elsheikh, 33, was born in Sudan and moved to west London with his family. He supported Queens Park Rangers Football Club and worked as a fairground mechanic. His younger brother died fighting in Iraq. At the time of his capture in 2018 Elsheikh was married to a Canadian and had another wife in Syria with whom he had at least one child.
Alexanda Kotey, 38, was born in Westminster to a Ghanaian father and Greek Cypriot mother. He converted to Islam in his twenties after falling in love with a Muslim woman. He attended a mosque in west London with Emwazi. Captured with Elsheikh, Kotey admitted all the charges and reached a plea deal. He will be sentenced next month.
Aine Davis was born in Hammersmith. Heavily involved in gangs, he used the nickname “Biggz” and was found guilty of several drugs and firearms offences. He went to fight for Isis in Syria in July 2013 and was arrested by Turkish forces in 2015 on the eve of the Paris Bataclan attacks.
