(AP) El Shafee Elsheikh was not a typical Islamic State foot soldier — he was a senior leader who took particular pleasure in mistreating the hostages he held captive, prosecutors said Wednesday in opening statements of Elsheikh’s terrorism trial.
Elsheikh, a British national, is accused of … playing a leadership role in an Islamic State cell that kept more than 20 Western hostages captive in the years between 2012 and 2015, when the terrorist group controlled large swaths of Iraq and Syria and was at the height of its power.
Four Americans — journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller — were among the hostages. Foley, Sotloff and Kassig were killed by decapitation; gruesome videos broadcast their executions to the world. Mueller was forced into slavery and raped repeatedly by the Islamic State’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, before she was killed.
