British terror suspects deny alleged role in brutal ISIS execution cell
WASHINGTON, USA (North Press) – Two ISIS militants often referred to as the “Beatles” denied charges of taking and killing American hostages on Friday.
Alexanda Kotey, 36, and al-Shafee al-Sheikh, 32, were accused of being involved in the executions of four American citizens as well as British and Japanese nationals in Syria.
The pair, who grew up in London, are said to have been part of a four-strong terror cell dubbed “The Beatles” because of their English accents.
The cell, said to be made up of ringleader Mohammed Emwazi, known as Jihadi John, Aine Davis, Kotey, and al-Sheikh, was allegedly responsible for the killings of a number of Western and Japanese captives, including Britons Alan Henning and David Haines.
They are also accused of involvement in the killings of four American hostages – journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller.
Emwazi was killed in a US air strike in 2015, while Davis was later jailed in Turkey.
Kotey and al-Sheikh were transferred to the US on Wednesday after being captured by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in January 2018 and held in Iraq by the US military since October 2019.
At a brief hearing in the US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia on Friday, the two men pleaded not guilty to the eight charges against them via video link from jail and requested a trial by jury. The case is due back in court on January 15 to set a trial date.
Prosecutor Dennis Fitzpatrick said some of the evidence in the case is classified, which will require some pre-trial hearings to be closed to the public to determine how that evidence will be handled.
The charges against them include hostage-taking resulting in death and providing material support to terrorists – five of the eight counts carry mandatory sentences of life imprisonment.
Many of the executions Kotey and al-Sheikh were allegedly involved in were filmed and shown around the world in graphic detail by ISIS.
The two men refused, through their defense, to admit that they had committed the crimes they were accused of, and demanded that they be tried by a jury.
They also waived their right to a speedy trial within 90 days, which is not possible according to all the parties concerned due to the complexity of the file, according to what was reported by AFP.
Judge T. S. Ellis said, “I hope to organize the fastest trial possible.”
Ellis set the 15th of next January as the date for the next hearing.
The guilty evidence containing classified information will be transferred to the lawyers of the two defendants, who were deported on Wednesday from Iraq to the United States and placed in custody in a secret location in Virginia.
The day before they were deported, a grand jury charged them with the kidnapping and murder of four Americans.
The two men grew up in the United Kingdom and became extremists there, before joining ISIS in Syria in 2012. Later, they were stripped of their British citizenship. They were then placed under the supervision of the US military in Iraq in October 2019, during the Turkish attack on northeastern Syria.
As of 2015, the United States submitted a request for legal aid with the British authorities to obtain evidence against the two men, but London suspended the cooperation in 2018.
This came after the British government received criticism for its reluctance to demand that the death penalty not be imposed on them if they were tried, “which is a departure from its initial opposition to the death penalty.”
The United States committed at the end of August not to sentence the two men to death.
British judiciary resumed judicial cooperation, which allowed the presentation of evidence paving the way for the two men to be charged and deported.