42 2GM Saturday April 30 2022 | the times
Wo r l d
The 11-year-old daughter of a British
man beheaded by Islamic State told two
members of the gang that imprisoned
him how much she missed her father
before a US court handed down eight
life sentences to one of them yesterday.
“My mum is trying hard, but I can
often see that she is sad,” Athea Haines,
daughter of the aid worker David
Haines, told the court in Alexandria,
Virginia, as Alexanda Kotey, 38, and El
Shafee Elsheikh, 33, sat yards away with
their legal teams. With Mohammed
Emwazi they formed a brutal Isis cell
known as the Beatles by their hostages
because of their British accents.
Kotey, who admitted five charges of
hostage-taking and three terrorist con-
spiracy charges, was sentenced yester-
day. He looked at his victim’s daughter
as she spoke with remarkable compo-
sure. Elsheikh, who was found guilty by
a jury two weeks ago, stared down or
closed his eyes.
“I wasn’t even three years old last
time I saw him. I miss him so much,”
Athea said, speaking into a microphone
during a series of pre-sentence state-
ments for victims of the Isis terrorists
who grew up in London but have been
stripped of their British citizenship.
“Sometimes I get sad when I see my
friends from school and club laughing
and playing with their dads,” she said.
“It is not easy to be that kid in school
whose dad was killed by terrorists.”
Kotey was told by Judge Thomas
Ellis that he would spend his whole life
behind bars for “egregious, violent and
inhumane conduct” for his role in the
kidnap, torture and death of four Amer-
icans, two Britons and others held in
Syria.
He will be eligible for transfer to a
British prison in 15 years under the
terms of his plea agreement, although
the final decision remains with the Brit-
ish authorities.
The men appeared in court together
to spare the victims’ relatives from
having to repeat the exercise when
Elsheikh is sentenced in August.
Shirley Sotloff, mother of Steven Sot-
loff, one of the murdered Americans,
reprimanded Elsheikh several times as
he closed his eyes when she spoke to the
court, telling him: “Elsheikh, please
don’t close your eyes, leave them open
and look at me. Yes — you have to.”
Elsheikh, wearing green prison over-
alls and a black pandemic facemask,
was sitting next to two court-appointed
lawyers, one of whom dabbed his eyes
with a tissue during the statements.
Sotloff described the torture of all the
families who for many months did not
know what was happening to their
loved ones, only to witness their grue-
some deaths in Isis propaganda videos
and continue to suffer sleepless nights
and trauma eight years later.
She continued: “Steven’s death was
like a global worldwide horror movie
that was witnessed live and continues
to be replayed with the click of a button
for millions to see. This replays in our
families’ heads every single day. The
orange jumpsuit, shaved head, sicken-
ing vision of our son being held at knife-
point was the first we had seen his
image in a year and a half. The brutalEl Shafee Elsheikh, left, and Alexanda
Kotey sat yards from victims’ relatives
Isis ‘Beatle’ given
eight life sentences
for Syria murders
execution that followed of our innocent
son and the children of the families
here today, used for political leverage
by people they never knew, never hurt,
a pawn in a war of terror. They were not
soldiers or a threat to anyone in any
way and died in the most incomprehen-
sible way.”
David Haines’s elder daughter,
Bethany, 24, told the court how her life
had been wrecked by grief, causing her
to drop out of college and be unable to
embark on a career. “The toll that the
actions of these men have taken on my
family is immense,” she said. “My
grandparents died of grief and could
never get over the loss of their son. I
have since been diagnosed with com-
plex post-traumatic stress disorder, de-
pression and anxiety. My whole life has
been turned upside down.”
She wanted her father to celebrate
birthdays with her and her son “but in-
stead he is in a mass grave in the hills of
Raqqa. He hasn’t been laid to rest, he
was dumped like a bag of rubbish”.
She said she could not forgive his
torturers while they made no apology.
“Neither of these men have expressed
one ounce of remorse for their actions.”
At the end she approached Kotey as he
was about to be taken away and said: “I
hope you go rot in hell.”
Lucy Henning, daughter of the Brit-
ish aid worker Alan Henning, told the
court that she came across the behead-
ing video of her father on Instagram.
Struggling against her emotions, she
said she kept blaming herself and “if I
wasn’t such a moody daughter perhaps
he wouldn’t have gone” to Syria in 2014.
Paula Kassig, mother of Peter Kassig,
an American aid worker who converted
to Islam and was beheaded aged 26,
said that “due to the actions of the Isis
cell nicknamed the Beatles my husband
and I were both forced to retire early
from professions we loved, teaching
and nursing.” She added: “Knowing
that the man I rocked to sleep as an
infant and whose hand I held when he
was fearful as a child was being starved,
beaten, tortured and threatened with
death every day for over a year while I
was not able to help him at all was
beyond my ability to cope.”
Judge Ellis appeared to choke up with
emotion twice during his sentencing as
he praised the victims and their rela-
tives. He declined a request from
Kotey’s defence team to recommend
that he not serve his sentence in the
ADX Florence “supermax” prison
where inmates are held in solitary con-
finement and allowed out for only an
hour a day. The US Bureau of Prisons
will now decide where he is held.
“Countries celebrate heroes. We
should celebrate these individuals,” he
said in reference to the victims. “They
demonstrated courage, purpose and
compassion in the most difficult cir-
cumstances.” He added he was proud
that the two terrorists received a prof-
essional defence team and a fair trial.United States
David Charter Alexandria
A
converted monastery in
the Vatican gardens is
the tranquil haven to
which Pope Benedict
XVI retired nine years
ago, but it has also become the
centre of an ideological battle that
has undermined the papacy of his
successor and split the Catholic
Church (Philip Willan writes).
After Benedict became the first
pontiff in six centuries to relinquish
his office, Pope Francis describedhis predecessor as a “wise
grandfather” whose presence and
advice were a blessing. Benedict,
now 95, treated Francis, 85, with
deference, insisting there was only
one Pope and he would assist him
by becoming invisible and silent.
The slow deterioration of this
relationship and its consequences
for the church are the subject of a
new book by Massimo Franco, of
the Corriere della Sera newspaper.
Franco describes the breakdown,
which has led to open hostilities
between the two papal courts.
“As long as Jorge Mario
Bergoglio [Francis] felt strong and
confident of controlling the course
of his visionary and rather chaotic
reforms, Benedict was invited to
speak, to be present at the most
important ceremonies; in effect to
provide a joint management of the
papacy,” Franco writes. JosephTwo popes
openly hostile
to each other,
claims book
Band of jihadists
6 Mohammed Emwazi, who died in
a US drone strike in November 2015
aged 27, was known as “Jihadi John”,
leader of the Isis Beatles. He was
born in Kuwait but his family moved
to west London when he was six.
Emwazi graduated in computing
from Westminster University in- He went to Syria in 2013.
Emwazi was identified by his voice
as the knife-wielding killer showing
only his eyes in beheading videos.
6 El Shafee Elsheikh, 33, was born in
Sudan and his family came to west
London as refugees. He supported
Queens Park Rangers and worked
as a fairground mechanic. His
mother, Maha Elgizouli, told The
Washington Post that her three
“kids were perfect” until they were
suddenly radicalised. Elsheikh’s
younger brother Mahmoud died
fighting in Iraq.6 Alexanda Kotey, 38, was born in
Westminster, London, to a Ghanaian
father and Greek Cypriot mother. He
converted to Islam in his twenties.
Kotey attended a mosque in west
London with Emwazi and was
arrested with Elsheikh in London in
2011 after taking part in a
demonstration on the tenth
anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.6 Aine Davis, 38, born in
Hammersmith, west London, was
nicknamed “Paul” by one of the
hostages because of his British
accent but it emerged during
Elsheikh’s trial that he was not
considered a Beatle. He went to
fight for Isis in Syria in 2013 and was
arrested by Turkish forces in 2015.
Davis was jailed in Turkey in 2017.