The biggest US intelligence hunt since the ten-year search for Osama bin Laden has been launched for leading figures in the Islamic State terrorist organisation involved in the beheading of two American journalists.
The videos produced by Isis revealing the murder of James Foley and Steven Sotloff are being examined by America’s top picture analysts to check if topographical features reveal the location of the terrorists and where the threatened killing of David Haines, a British hostage, might be carried out.
Every major branch of the US intelligence community is involved in the hunt for clues, not only from the videos but also from images transmitted from US drones and manned surveillance aircraft flying over northern Syria.
Key to the operation are specialists with the image analysts of the national photographic interpretation centre. They work at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency at Fort Belvoir in Springfield, Virginia, which played a crucial role in support of the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan in 2011.
US officials have claimed that although the two videos were released two weeks apart, it was possible that Sotloff, 31, had been killed at the same time as Foley, 40. However, that theory is undermined by two pieces of evidence revealed in the latest video.
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First, Sotloff’s closely shaved hair is slightly longer and darker and he has several days of growth on his beard, in comparison with the first video, where his head was almost bald and his face clean shaven.
Second, the masked jihadist with the English accent makes reference to the US bombing of the besieged Iraqi town of Amerli, which, according to the Pentagon, took place at 1.30am, British time, on Sunday
The jihadist has his mouth covered, so it is possible that the soundtrack to the second video could have been dubbed to make it contain contemporaneous references, but analysts would be able to detect differences on the audio between Sotloff’s statement and that of the man wielding a knife behind him.
Speaking in Washington yesterday, Matthew Olsen, director of the US National Counter-terrorism Centre, made it clear that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of Islamic State was the top target.
Mr Olsen described him as in the same category as bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current al-Qaeda leader, “because of the level of violence and the grandiose operations he had set forth”. Al-Baghdadi, who is also known as Abu Du’a and was once in US custody in Iraq, was purportedly last seen in a video taken in July, which was said to show him preaching in the Grand Mosque in the Iraqi city of Mosul.
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The US State Department is offering a $10 million (£6 million) reward for information that brings al-Baghdadi to justice.
The Sotloff family paid tribute last night to the murdered journalist. “Steve was no hero. Like all of us, he was a mere man who tried to find good concealed in a world of darkness,” Barak Barfi, the family spokesman, said. “He ultimately sacrificed his life to bring their story to the world... He had a gentle soul that this world will be without.”
Mr Barfi, switching to Arabic, then challenged al-Baghdadi to a debate on the tenets of Islam.