Inside the bloody world of Islamic State's British 'Beatles'

AbuAbu Khashab is a hill in the Syrian desert, half way between Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor. It is in the middle of nowhere.  It was at this remote spot on January 8th 2018 that a patrol from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) arrested 16 foreign jihadists who were fleeing after Islamic State had lost its territories. The Kurdish SDF soldiers subsequently handed over these seemingly ordinary prisoners to the United States Army who then ascertained their identities using fingerprints and biometric checks. It was only then, as the false identities were stripped away by science, that the American military realised the importance of the capture at Abu Khashab. For they had just got their hands on 'Ringo' and 'George', the last two members of 'The Beatles' who were at large.

'The Beatles' was the name given to four British jihadists because of their London accents; as a group they became notorious for the abuses they committed. Four years after their capture on that remote hill, 'Ringo' alias Alexanda Kotey and 'George' alias El Shafee Elsheikh are due to appear in a federal court at Alexandria, just south of Washington DC, later this year. Kotey, 37, has pleaded guilty to playing a role in the killing of four Americans, journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and humanitarian workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller, among other offences, and is due to be sentenced on March 4th. Elsheikh is to stand trial on similar charges. They both potentially face eight life sentences.

By analysing what this pair said to American intelligence during interrogation, as well as the evidence given by their accomplice and fellow 'Beatle', Aine Davis, at a criminal court at Silivri in Turkey, Mediapart has been able to piece together the story of the first terrorists to embody on the world stage the true threat posed by Islamic State.

The future Islamic State 'Beatles' all grew up in West London. As teenagers at the start of the 2000s Aine Davis, Mohamed Emwazi and Alexanda Kotey attended the al-Manaar mosque in Ladbroke Grove.
Born to Iraqi parents, Mohamed Emwazi was a shy British student who was “diligent, hard-working and charming” according to one former teacher. In 2009 he obtained a degree in information systems with business management from the University of Westminster. Though fond of fashionable clothes he had already become attracted to radical Islam and was on the radar of the British intelligence agencies. So when Emwazi set off for Tanzania, claiming he was going on safari with friends, the intelligence agencies suspected his real destination was Somalia and the Al-Shabab terrorist group, and he was turned back. In June 2010 he had been planning to return to Kuwait where he had previously worked but was detained at Heathrow Airport and stopped from travelling. He is said to have had on him a copy of the book 'Afghan Guerrilla Warfare: In the Words of the Mujahideen Fighters'.

One of thirteen children that his father had with four different women, Aine Lesley Jr Davis was a small-time criminal who converted to Islam in prison and voraciously read the books of Abdallah Azzam, Osama Bin Laden's mentor.

Alexanda Kotey, who had a father from Ghana and a Cypriot mother, was selling sports items and performing martial arts when he converted to Islam out of love. He quickly became radicalised and an apologist for suicide bombers. On September 11th 2011 Kotey, a friend of Emwazi, was arrested at a demonstration organised by the now-banned group Muslims Against Crusades, along with El Shafee Elsheikh. Elsheikh, who is of Sudanese origin, joined the army cadets in Britain at the age of 11. He later served time in prison for a variety of crimes including, he has himself stated, for “alleged” attempted murder. He and Kotey moved in the same radical circles.

This was the background to how the four friends answered the call to jihad and, eventually, went to Syria. Alexanda Kotey and Aine Davis tried to travel there in February 2012 but the former was turned back at the Turkish border while Davis returned to Britain within two months. In the late summer of 2012 Kotey tried again, this time with Mohamed Emwazi. Aware that they were known to the intelligence services they avoided airports and railway stations and travelled via Denmark and then Albania, Greece, Turkey and finally Syria. At the border post they met up with El Shafee Elsheikh who had made it there three months earlier.

The three friends went to their quarters in Idlib in the north-west of Syria where they fought under the banner of the al-Muhajireen brigade for foreign fighters. At the time this brigade was attached to Jabhat al-Nusra, then the dominant rebel group in the country. El Shafee Elsheikh said that he fought in battles around Idlip and Aleppo, while Mohamed Emwazi was singled out by the brigade's leaders for his intelligence and physical prowess. Alexanda Kotey said he fought during the capture of the Idlib suburb of Salqin in November 2012 when the Syrian rebels overcame the army of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad. Then, from the start of 2013, he worked as a “fitness trainer” in a jihadist training camp.

Meanwhile Aine Davis, who had left Britain for a second time, was taken in by Kotey and Elsheikh when he finally made it to Syria. “I had different ideas from them. I don't want to speak of what they were doing,” he told French investigating judges who came to question him six years later in a Turkish jail. It is clear, though, that at this time – 2013 – the three Britons who had arrived first had changed their roles. After taking part in fighting Elsheikh, Emwazi and Kotey were now engaged on another front – the kidnapping and holding of hostages.

On March 13th 2013 two humanitarian workers from a French non-governmental organisation, Italian Federico Motka and Briton David Haines, were taken by their kidnappers to a house in the middle of the Syrian countryside. They were handcuffed in a makeshift cell.

“Wait here. We'll question you tomorrow,” said one of the hooded men, before glancing at David Haines's passport and adding: “Welcome to Syria, you mutt!”

Four months earlier another pair of hostages, the journalists James Foley, an American, and Briton John Cantlie, had been kidnapped on the road after stopping at an internet café. At least 23 foreigners would fall into the same trap over the next year or so, as hostages were seized to help finance jihad in Syria.

The prime movers behind the operation each time were three jihadists who always wore hoods, sported Glock weapons in their belts and spoke faultless English with a London accent, suggesting they had grown up in a working class district of the British capital. Between themselves the hostages nicknamed them 'The Beatles'.

The leader of the group, Mohamed Emwazi, was dubbed 'John'. Obsessed by the size of the Uzi submachine gun he carried on his thigh, the left-handed Briton mixed with no one outside his loyal 'Beatles'. He would scornfully turn the other way so that he did not have to say hello to other jihadists he met. Emwazi was altogether less reserved, however, when it came to beating the hostages or strangling them until they passed out. He was also not averse to carrying out 'waterboarding' or simulated drowning.

Alexander Kotey was the 'Beatle' whom the hostages nicknamed 'Ringo'. Though he, too, took part in the beatings the hostages saw him as the most circumspect and cultivated of the four. And, like the original Ringo, he was seen as the “only one who was capable of a little humour”.

El Shafee Elsheikh was 'George'. With his acne-ravaged face, wavy hair and chin hair he came across as the most bad-tempered of the group. He would never miss an opportunity to simulate an execution, and he apparently relished saying to the Western hostages: “You don't know how much I hate you!”

The more corpulent Aine Davis or 'Paul', who used to wear thick socks with his sandals, only turned up as part of the jailer team later, in December 2013. The French hostages Didier François and Nicolas Hénin both say that he was the only one of the four never to have hit them. He called the prisoners “my friends” and was happy to teach them the Koran.

In the meantime the al-Muhajireen fighting brigade had quit Jabhat al-Nusra and joined the ranks of Islamic State. In practical terms this did not change anything for either the jailers or the hostages. Alexanda Kotey explained that the senior Islamic State figure Abu Mohammed al-Adnani had overseen the transfer of the hostages from one terrorist organisation to another by simply swearing the bay'ah, an oath of allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the future Islamic State caliph.

Meanwhile 'The Beatles' carried on harassing and abusing the hostages. “As soon as 'The Beatles' entered we had to remain with our heads bowed and on our knees against the wall,” said hostage Nicolas Hénin. “The whole aim was to bring the West to its knees by this massive project of hostage taking. They were impassive, apart from George who liked to get worked up to the point where he couldn't control himself.”

One Danish hostage later described how 'Ringo' Kotey had kicked him 25 times in the ribs “as a present” on the day of his 25th birthday. When interrogated by American intelligence Kotey explained the aim of the violence was to maintain control of the hostages and that the blows were often delivered before the proof of life recordings, in order to show the hostages humiliated. He said that his friend Mohamed Emwazi wanted to be feared and that he used to hit the youngest hostages, and in particular aid worker Peter Kassig because the latter had once been an Army Ranger in the American military.

Between the torture sessions and the battles, 'The Beatles' still found time to compose a parody of the well-known song 'Hotel California' by the Eagles. This cover version in the form of a homage to Osama Bin Laden had a clear message to the hostages, who had to learn it by heart.

“Welcome to Osama’s lovely hotel

Such a lovely place, such a lovely place

You will never leave Osama’s lovely hotel

And if you try, you will die

Mr Bigley-Style.”

Kenneth Bigley was a British civil engineer who was kidnapped in Baghdad in 2004 and later beheaded by jihadists.

Having left the hostages in the charge of French jihadist jailers for a while, 'The Beatles' took back sole control of them again from the end of January 2014, first of all in a villa near Raqqa whose location was carefully kept secret. Kotey told his US interrogators that they had to prioritise discreet locations over highly-secure ones. This was why there was no overly-visible security perimeter or high walls and barbed wire. And it also explained why the hostages were never held in the municipal stadium at Raqqa where, under the stone terraces, Islamic State's secret service the Amniyat were based, and where 1,500 Syrian prisoners were detained in its basements.

But while their prisons were discreet, the hostages did not lack surveillance. Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh estimated that there was around one Syrian guard for every hostage. Like them, all were members of the Amniyat or AMNI. However, the Syrian guards were forbidden from assaulting the hostages. Only 'The Beatles' were authorised to use violence against them.

On February 12th 2014 the hostages were transferred to the grounds of an oil refinery, a location which the English-speaking hostages dubbed the 'Pipeline' and the French speakers 'Tatooine', both references to the Star Wars films. When the guards noticed that the prisoners were communicating between themselves by swapping messages placed in a crevice under the toilet rims in the refinery they read and photographed them before putting them back in their original hiding place, Kotey revealed.

At the same time as this was going on 'The Beatles' were negotiating with the hostages' families over their release; the Islamic State was in dire need of weapons. Elsheikh was mostly in charge of making any calls; Emwazi did not want to talk himself as he was afraid his voice might be identified.

During the first half of 2014 the European hostages were gradually released. Only the British and American captives remained under the control of 'The Beatles' as their governments refused to pay a ransom. Their morale fell as their former fellow captives left. They were meanwhile completely unaware that during the summer –reportedly on July 4th, American Independence Day – an American special forces unit had launched an attack to free the hostages from the grounds of the oil refinery. Several Syrian jihadists were killed but the attempt failed; a short time before the attack the eight remaining hostages had been transferred to a palace in Raqqa itself. They were still being overseen by 'The Beatles' whose leader Mohamed Emwazi was about to become infamous under another nickname, that of 'Jihadi John'.

The video was called 'Message to America'. In the images you can see Barack Obama's televised appearance in which he announced the start of air strikes in Iraq. Then the scene switches to the middle of the desert. On a small hill a man dressed in an orange jumpsuit is on his knees. Standing next to him is a figure in a black hood, wearing combat fatigues of the same colour. Only the brown strap of his shoulder holster sticks out.

A clip-on microphone is attached to the neck of the kneeling man's jumpsuit and he starts to speak, stating that his “real killers” are the American government. The kneeling man is American journalist journalist James Foley. He then addresses his brother John who was in the US Air Force, and talks about the US bombing of Iraq. “I died that day, John. When your colleagues dropped that bomb on those people, they signed my death certificate,” he says.

In the following shot a knife is now in the hooded man's left hand, with his right hand resting on the shoulder of the kneeling man. The man talks in a London accent, and threatens America for daring to attack Islamic State. Then, without hurry, the man with the London accent whom the media, unaware of his true identity, would nickname 'Jihadi John', performs his grisly task.

This video made use of the same imagery – a man in black, a victim in orange, in the vastness of the desert – that ten years earlier had established the notoriety of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (who were the blueprint for Islamic State) and its leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose nickname was the 'Sheikh of the Slaughterers'. Under interrogation Kotey listed the jihadists who had been present on August 19th 2014 at James Foley's execution. They included Oussama Atar, who was the future mastermind of the Paris terror attacks of November 2015, and who was also deputy to Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, Islamic State's spokesperson, and Abu Sulayman al-Amriki ('The American'), a member of Islamic State's media office who held the camera.

Elsheikh explained to his American interrogators that Foley was beheaded in reprisal for the attempt by the American special forces to free the hostages. This was one of the rare points on which he and Kotey diverged in their confessions. The latter stated that in fact Mohamed Emwazi had initially been stopped from executing a hostage after the special forces attack, as Sheikh al-Adnani apparently considered it had been a justified American act.

Nonetheless, in the weeks following James Foley's murder at least 27 hostages were beheaded by Jihadi John and his henchmen. Interrogated by the Americans, Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh carefully denied they were at any hostage executions, even though Kotey had previously admitted being present at several beheadings. And in the course of his interrogation Elsheikh recalled a hostage who was smiling and laughing in the moments before he was murdered.

Two hostages from English-speaking countries were to escape the bloodthirsty 'Beatles' though their ultimate fate was no better. Having tried in vain to exchange her for a Pakistani terrorist imprisoned in the United States and serving an 86-year jail term – a cause that had impassioned Kotey when he was younger – the American aid worker Kayla Mueller was given to the caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in late 2014. He took her as his wife and raped her on many occasions. Islamic State announced her death in January 2015, saying she had been killed during a Jordanian air strike. Kotey and Elsheikh both repeated this version of events, but it has never been confirmed by the International Coalition, who believe that it was the caliph himself who killed the unfortunate young woman.

The other English-speaking hostage to escape execution at the hands of 'The Beatles' was John Cantlie. The first hostage along with James Foley to be taken by 'The Beatles', Cantlie converted to Islam during his captivity. Elsheikh boasted that he was his mentor in Islamic State even if he thought that the British journalist have gone mad. Jihadi John is said to have believed that the hostage's conversion was genuine and forbade his execution. The journalist later appeared in propaganda videos, in particular in February 2015, interviewing a French jihadist who was rejoicing over the recent massacres at Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine and at the HyperCacher store in Paris. Meanwhile Jihadi John was himself soon to have no further influence on events.

In the morning of November 12th 2015 'John' – real name Mohamed Emwazi - left his wife's apartment in Raqqa and got into a van. An informer who was concealed in the area alerted a Western intelligence agency.

Guided by a pilot sitting at a desk in Nevada, a Predator drone followed the direction of the vehicle until it parked next to a building housing an Islamic Court. Emwazi got out of the passenger's seat just as the first Hellfire missile smashed into the vehicle. A second missile was fired just in case.

Jihadi John was no more.

The next day the British prime minister David Cameron justified this attack on a fellow citizen, describing it as an act of “self defence”. Emwazi was suspected of planning an attack in Britain. Alexanda Kotey later wrote a homage to his dead friend in one of the terrorist organisation's propaganda magazines.

A few hours after the Predator drone had taken out Islamic State's executioner, Turkish police burst into a villa in a suburb of Istanbul and arrested Aine Davis. They suspected him, though they were unable to prove it, of working with others on a similar kind of attack to that which was about to hit Paris the next day.

A few months later, in February 2016, the bombmaker behind the November 2015 attacks in Paris, who was now making plans to blow up Zaventem airport in Brussels, sent a message to his leader, Oussama Atar, updating him on the latest targets earmarked by the terror cell. In past messages he had always been careful to say hello to seven of his “brothers from the brigade”. Among those he passed greetings to were El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey, the last two 'Beatles' still in Syria.

Alexanda Kotey said he later ran a training camp for the Islamic State's special forces, known as the quwat khas. Though Kotey did not make it clear, this may have been a camp that was based on an island on the River Euphrates, close to the Tabqa dam. This consisted of 25 underground barrack rooms and a training complex built inside a mountain.

Meanwhile El Shafee Elsheikh said that to avoid the constant bombings from the International Coalition he had wanted to join a fighting unit but had been prevented from doing so because of his high “visibility”. He later moved to become a Linux programmer instead.

A 2018 report by France's domestic intelligence agency, the DGSI, said Elsheikh and Kotey had both occupied posts within Islamic State which had previously been reserved only for its Iraqi founders. According to the agency, this promotion had been granted to the two remaining 'Beatles' in “recognition of their actions and their new status”.

Kotey and Elsheikh were to come across the survivor John Cantlie one final time, according to their evidence. There has been no visible sign that the British journalist is still alive since a video in 2016 showing him in Mosul. Alexanda Kotey said that a member of the Islamic State media office always accompanied John Cantlie and had orders to execute him if he tried to escape.

Also in 2016 Kotey returned to Islamic State's special forces to support Franco-Tunisian jihadist Boubaker el-Hakim, who was the target of numerous secret services around the world. Kotey said that at the time the IS secret service unit the Amniyat had just uncovered and executed a spy who had a photo of the Franco-Tunisian emir. However, the Briton did not say if he had helped el-Hakim, who at the time was preparing another Paris-style terror attack.

Five years later, the mood is very different and on Thursday 2nd September 2021 Alexanda Kotey signed a plea agreement in which he admitted all the charges that the Americans had filed against him. As a result he will spend the rest of his life in prison, first of all in the United States and then, after 15 years, in Britain. El Shafee Elsheikh has not pleaded guilty and will be tried by a federal court in Virginia in the coming months.

While El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey have admitted their roles inside 'The Beatles', they have both insisted that Aine Davis, who was given a seven-year jail term in Turkey for his part in a terrorist criminal conspiracy, and who faces another trial in the US or Britain, never took part in the kidnapping or holding of the hostages. And when a delegation of French magistrates and intelligence officials were going to interrogate Davis in his Turkish prison about the role played by his friends Elsheikh and Kotey, Davis replied that he “didn't want to speak about them”.

'The Beatles' may have ended, but the group's remaining members are still loyal to each other.

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• This is the second of two articles on what 'The Beatles' have revealed while in custody in the United States, the first can be found here. The original of this article in French can be found here.

English version by Michael Streeter