By Madeleine Kearns
Friday, July 31, 2020
Imagine you had a beloved child, born in a free and prosperous
country. Imagine that he or she grew into a brave and selfless adult, the kind
that ventured into some war-stricken land to help those less fortunate. Now
imagine that he or she was mercilessly abducted, starved, tortured, raped,
beaten, stripped of his or her clothing, and barbarically murdered in front of
the whole world. Unimaginable, isn’t it?
Tragically, Diane and John Foley, Paul and Ed Kassig,
Marsha and Carl Mueller, Shirley and Art Sotloff — as well as the families of
the 23 other victims of the ISIS cell nicknamed the “Beatles” (on account of
their English accents) — know only too well what this is like. For six years,
these parents have been suffering the shock of this real-life nightmare. Now
they are worried that their children’s killers could evade justice.
Two of the British-born jihadi “Beatles,” Alexanda Kotey
and El Shafee Elsheikh, who were captured by Kurdish forces, are now being held
by American forces in Iraq. Last year, then–U.K. home secretary Sajid Javid
stripped Kotey and Elsheikh of their British citizenship on national-security
grounds and agreed, with then–U.S. attorney general Jeff Sessions, that they
would be extradited to the United States to face trial there. In a classified
letter, Javid made clear that Britain would cooperate fully in the sharing of
intelligence but would not, as was the precedent, ask for the possibility of a
death sentence be removed.
But after Javid’s letter was leaked to the press,
Elsheikh’s mother, helped by so-called “human rights” organizations, continued
to wage aggressive action against the U.K. government, claiming that they had
acted illegally and demanding that her son be tried in Britain. In March of
this year, the U.K. Supreme Court ruled in her favor, finding that, because the
death penalty was still on the table, sharing intelligence on the suspects with
the U.S. would be unlawful.
Richard Walton, a senior fellow at the influential
British think-tank, Policy Exchange, and former head of counterterrorism at
Scotland Yard, explained at the time that Javid had “correctly judged that
these risks [of a conviction resulting in the death penalty] were outweighed by
the risks of no prosecution at all.” This is owing to strict rules in the U.K.
about the kinds of evidence — for example, wiretapping or evidence from
warzones — that can be submitted in British courts, as well as highly
contentious European laws protecting the interests of criminals and terrorists
under the guise of “human rights.”
On Thursday, Walton reiterated his concerns in an
interview with National Review. “In 30 years of counter-terrorism work,
the crimes committed by the so-called ISIS “Beatles” amount to the most heinous
terrorism offenses I’ve ever encountered,” he said. “Were Kotey and El-Sheikh
tried in the U.K., there is a serious risk that they would walk free which
would amount to a propaganda win for ISIS, make a mockery of the UK’s
counter-terrorism strategy and leave the public despairing of justice.” Walton
explained that “it’s routine for the U.K. to work with the U.S. in trying
terrorists and — were the U.S. to remove the possibility of the death penalty —
that could still happen in this case.”
Now that the situation has come to a standstill in the
United Kingdom, it is up to the United States to deliver justice. Either the
U.S. can determine that it has enough evidence to proceed without the U.K.’s
help, or it could remove the possibility of the death penalty. (The latter
being less likely, as it would set dangerous new precedent.) The victims’
families would be content with either way forward, so long as it results in the
perpetrators being tried in an American federal court.
“We’d like [Kotey and El-Sheikh] to come to the U.S. and
have a fair criminal-court trial where they could present their evidence and we
can present what we have,” Diane Foley, mother of the murdered American
journalist James Foley, told National Review. “We want to assure the
prosecutors here in the U.S. that there is plenty of evidence that we can use
against these two.” Carl Mueller, father of the murdered American aid worker
Kayla Mueller, agreed, telling National Review that before the
coronavirus brought everything to a “screeching halt,” they “were progressing
quite well with the independent investigation and finding out a lot of intel.”
Quite apart from the extradition dilemma, Diane Foley
does not believe the death penalty should be used against her son’s killers, as
it would “make them into martyrs and does not give them a chance for
redemption.” (Mrs. Foley is a devout Catholic.) Yet, she said, “when people do
this to our citizens, we must act, we must use our justice system and all of
the years of investigation and bring them to trial.” In the United Kingdom, it
is Elsheikh’s mother who has been most effective at gaining sympathy for her
son — and in turning that sympathy into action. “I would like her to look at
our side of it,” Mrs. Foley told National Review:
There’s an nonprofit called
Reprieve in the U.K. who has been working very hard with Elsheikh’s mother, and
they had the audacity to try to get us to side with her to protect her son,
because I’m against the death penalty. . . . I’d like her to spend a day in my
shoes. I don’t blame her for wanting to protect her son. I don’t want him
killed, but I do want him to face justice for his crimes. I do want him to be
put on trial.
Is that really too much to ask? Carl Mueller —whose
daughter was raped and tortured before pictures of her dead body were sent to
him and his wife by email — certainly doesn’t think so. Mueller told National
Review: “If the English government does not want to seek justice for the
families of those who were tortured, jailed, and beheaded, then they should set
aside for the U.S., give us the information we need, to take care of
prosecuting these two guys.”
In a war zone, it isn’t always possible to bring
international terrorists to trial. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State
military commander who repeatedly raped and abused Kayla Mueller, blew himself
up (along with two children) during a raid in Barisha, Syria, by U.S. forces.
Mohammed Emwazi — a member of the ISIS “Beatles” (nicknamed “Jihadi John”) who
was responsible for beheading James Foley, Peter Kassig, and Steven Sotloff as
well as Britons David Haines and Alan Henning — was similarly obliterated in
2015 in Raqqa, Syria, during a U.S. drone strike. But bombs are a blunt (and
ultimately unsatisfactory) force with which to fight terrorists. Such
terrorists are now beyond “earthly justice,” as their victims’ parents put it
in a recent Washington Post op-ed imploring the Trump administration to
hold the surviving jihadists accountable. With their bodily destruction goes
critical information that could have come out in a trial, as well as chance to
send ISIS a powerful message — that we in the West have a strong and civilized
way of dealing with traitors and murderers.
While no parent could ever be expected to recover from losing a child in this way, finding out exactly what happened, retrieving their children’s remains, and bringing those responsible to justice would help bring some healing and closure. Moreover, there is far more at stake than justice for the victims and their families. The entire credibility of British and American national-security and counterterrorist strategy rests on holding terrorists accountable under our laws. To allow these monsters to evade justice — their guilt laid bare before us — is to make a mockery of our most fundamental principles.
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