A frame from video released by the Islamic State yesterday purportedly shows American freelance journalist Steven Sotloff shortly before his execution by beheading in an unknown desert location.
Reuters
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The Islamic State yesterday released a video purporting to show the beheading of American hostage Steven Sotloff, raising the stakes in its confrontation with Washington over US air strikes on its insurgents in Iraq.
A masked figure in the video seen by Reuters also issued a threat against a British hostage, a man the group named as David Haines, and warned governments to back off “this evil alliance of America against the Islamic State”.
The purported executioner appeared to be the same British-accented man who appeared in an August 19 video showing the killing of American journalist James Foley, and it showed a similar desert setting. In both videos, the captives wore orange jumpsuits.
“I’m back, Obama, and I’m back because of your arrogant foreign policy towards the Islamic State, because of your insistence on continuing your bombings and in Amerli, Zumar and the Mosul Dam, despite our serious warnings,” the man said, addressing the US president.
“So just as your missiles continue to strike our people, our knife will continue to strike the necks of your people.”
In the video, Sotloff describes himself as “paying the price” for the US intervention in Iraq with his life.
Sotloff, a freelance journalist, was kidnapped in Syria in August 2013. Sotloff’s mother Shirley appealed on August 27 in a videotaped message to Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, for her son’s release.
In the video it released last month, Islamic State said Foley’s death was in retaliation for US air strikes on its insurgents who have overrun wide areas of northern Iraq.
The US resumed air strikes in Iraq in August for the first time since the end of the US occupation in 2011.
The raids followed major gains by Islamic State, which has declared a Caliphate in areas it controls in Syria and Iraq.
In Washington, the White House said it could not immediately confirm that Islamic State had released a video of Sotloff’s beheading.
“We have seen a video that purports to be the murder of US citizen Steven Sotloff by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The intelligence community is working as quickly as possible to determine its authenticity,” National Security Council spokesperson Bernadette Meehan said in a statement.
“If genuine, we are appalled by the brutal murder of an innocent American journalist and we express our deepest condolences to his family and friends.”
A source said that while US officials have yet to formally confirm the validity of the video, it appeared to be authentic.
Iraq’s outgoing foreign minister Hoshiyar Zebari, condemned what he called “this savage killing...an example of savagery and evil,” and said this was evidence of the need for Iraq and the West to defeat the Islamic State.
“We have a common enemy and the whole world is moving in the right direction to stop this savagery and brutality,” Zebari said. “The whole world is standing united against IS. They must be defeated so these horrid scenes will not be repeated.”
Iraqi Shia politician Sami Askari, who is close to outgoing Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, said: “They are trying to scare the Americans not to intervene. I don’t think Washington will be scared and stop ... This is evil. Every human being has to fight this phenomenon. Like cancer, there is no cure. You have to fight it.”
British Prime Minister David Cameron condemned Sotloff’s apparent decapitation as “an absolutely disgusting and despicable act (by) barbaric terrorists”. He said he would hold a meeting of his COBRA security crisis team today.
On August 24, Nusra Front militants in Syria freed an American writer, Peter Theo Curtis, who had been missing since 2012, following efforts by Qatar to secure his release.
