LONDON: Daesh militant Alexanda Kotey, known for his part in a brutal murder squad, is thought to have been fleeing to Turkey when he was seized by US-backed Kurdish forces in northern Syria.
Kotey, 34, along with El Shafee Elsheikh, 29, was part of a notorious Daesh execution cell, known for participating in the brutal beheadings and torture of hostages, who knew them as the “Beatles” because of their British accents. “He was intending to escape toward Turkey with cooperation and coordination with friends of his on the Turkish side,” senior SDF official Redur Xelil told Reuters. “He is now under investigation with us,” he added. No information on Elsheikh was provided. A senior security official in Turkey described the claim as “nonsense.”
The pair were detained in January but American officials initially kept the news secret “to allow analysts more time to pursue the intelligence leads,” The New York Times said.
UK officials described the capture as a potential “treasure trove” of intelligence and are hoping to glean information on the whereabouts of John Cantlie, the British journalist captured by Daesh in 2012 alongside US journalist James Foley, who was beheaded in 2014.
Kotey and Elsheikh are already believed to have supplied valuable intelligence and could provide important insights on foreign fighters disbanded by the collapse of the so-called caliphate.
Tahir Abbas, a senior research fellow specializing in Islamophobia and radicalization at RUSI, a London-based think tank, told Arab News that their capture presented “vital and valuable opportunities” to gain greater insights into the workings of Daesh. “These individuals carry with them all sorts or knowledge and understanding of what went on inside” as well as “how people came from the UK and other European countries to Syrian and Iraq.”
Kotey, described by friends as a “quiet and humble” football fan of Ghanaian-Greek Cypriot origin, acted as a recruiter for Daesh and is believed to have encouraged several UK nationals to join the group. According to the US State Department, he “likely engaged in the group’s executions and exceptionally cruel torture methods, including electronic shock and waterboarding.”
Elsheikh also participated in the torture and had a reputation for “waterboarding, mock executions, and crucifixions” the US State Department said.
The cell’s frontman was Mohamed Emwazi, known as Jihadi John, who became notorious after appearing in Daesh propaganda videos depicting the execution of Western hostages, including Foley, UK aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, US aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig and Japanese hostage Kenji Goto. He was killed in a US drone strike in 2015 following an extensive manhunt.
According to US officials the cell beheaded at least 27 Western hostages and was responsible for torturing many more. They were known for their brutality, frequently beating the hostages they held in Raqqa, who knew them by their Beatles names — Ringo, Paul, John and George.
A fourth member of the group Aine Davis is imprisoned in Turkey after being arrested near Istanbul in 2015. Like the others, Davis lived in West London, where they are believed to have met before traveling to Syria to join Daesh.
There is now speculation over whether the pair, who may have had their British citizenships revoked under powers available to the UK Home Office, will be repatriated to the UK or put on trial in the US. Their capture by US forces and alleged participation in the killing of US hostages could see some in the Trump administration push for them to be moved to Guantanamo Bay.
In his State of the Union address last month, Trump announced a decision to keep the controversial detention facility open: “I am asking Congress to ensure that in the fight against Isis and Al-Qaeda we continue to have all necessary power to detain terrorists wherever we chase them down, wherever we find them. And in many cases, for them, it will now be Guantanamo bay.”
Both UK MP Tobias Ellwood, whose brother was killed in a terrorist attack in Bali in 2002, and the mother of James Foley, have called for the pair to receive a fair trial. Diane Foley told the BBC: “I would like them to be brought to trial in the US but as long as they are brought to fair trial and detained and justice is served I would be most grateful.
“It does not bring James back but hopefully it protects others from this kind of crime.”
“I would like them to spend the rest of their lives being detained in a prison.”
Speaking on BBC Radio 4, Nicolas Henin, a former hostage who was held for 10 months, described the cell’s cruel treatment of captives. “I don’t like the word but yes, some of us have been tortured,” he said, adding that the men’s accents had clearly identified them as British.
“I will be extremely frustrated if they are not offered a fair trial, and I don’t think that the local authorities in northern Syria or that detention in Guantanamo would be justice,” he said. “I would like them brought back to Britain.”
All four members of the group are believed to have been radicalized in London. Kotey, a father of two who converted to Islam in his twenties, joined an aid convoy to Gaza in 2009 and never returned. Investigators believe he became radicalized while attending Al-Manaar mosque in Ladbroke Grove, alongside Emwazi.
“It’s right that they are returned to the UK and face justice accordingly,” Abbas, the research fellow at RUSI, said. “Yes they carried out undoubtedly heinous acts but they were, if their citizenship hasn’t been revoked, British citizens, who still have a claim to their Britishness on some level and we as a state should acknowledge that and process them through the justice system — that would be the right and fair thing to do and it would send the right signals.”
Elsheikh and his younger brother Mahmoud, who was killed while fighting for Daesh in Iraq, came from a family of Sudanese refugees. His mother Maha Elgizouli claimed her “perfect” son was influenced by the sermons of a radical West London Islamist cleric, Hani Al-Sibai, who once described the London bombings as a “great victory” for Al-Qaeda.
Egyptian-born Al-Sibai, 55, has been linked to numerous extremists, including Emwazi and Elsheikh, and is cited as an influence on the Tunisian terror group that trained Seifeddine Rezgui Yacoubi before he killed 38 tourists on a Tunisian beach in 2015.
Elgizouli said in an interview that she confronted the cleric and slapped him, saying “What have you done to my son?” After learning that Elsheikh was involved with the groups, she said: “That boy now is not my son. That is not the son I raised.”
Despite attempts by successive British governments to deport Al-Sibai he continues to live in West London.
The UK Home Office has faced similar problems with radical preachers in the past, notably Egyptian-born cleric Abu Hamza Al-Masri and Jordanian Abu Qatada, who was eventually deported to Jordan in 2014.
A report published in Oct. 2017 by The Soufan Center found that thousands of Daesh fighters had already returned to their home countries, including at least 425 to the UK — more than any other country in Europe.
How four British extremists went from West London to heading a brutal Daesh death cell
How four British extremists went from West London to heading a brutal Daesh death cell
American Airlines jet collides with helicopter near Washington’s Reagan Airport
- A web camera shot from Kennedy Center in Washington showed an explosion mid-air across the Potomac around 2047 ET with an aircraft in flames crashing down rapidly
- There has not been a fatal US passenger airplane accident since February 2009, but a series of near-miss incidents in recent years have raised serious safety concerns
WASHINGTON: An American Airlines regional passenger jet and a US Army Black Hawk helicopter crashed into the Potomac River after a midair collision near Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday night, officials said.
The Washington Post said multiple bodies had been pulled from the water. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said on social media that “we know there are fatalities,” though he did not say how many.
An American Airlines source told Reuters that 60 passengers, along with two pilots and two crew members were scheduled to be on the flight. Three soldiers were aboard the helicopter, a US official said.
There has not been a fatal US passenger airplane accident since February 2009, but a series of near-miss incidents in recent years have raised serious safety concerns.
NBC reported that four people had been pulled alive from the Potomac River.
A web camera shot from the Kennedy Center in Washington showed an explosion mid-air across the Potomac around 2047 ET with an aircraft in flames crashing down rapidly.
The US Federal Aviation Administration said a PSA Airlines regional jet collided midair with the helicopter while on approach to Reagan.
PSA was operating Flight 5342 for American Airlines, which had departed from Wichita, Kansas, according to the FAA.
Police said multiple agencies were involved in a search and rescue operation in the Potomac River, which borders the airport.
Dozens of police, ambulance and recuse units, some ferrying boats, staged along the river and raced to positions along the tarmac of Reagan airport. Live TV images showed several boats in the water, flashing blue and red lights.
The airport said late on Wednesday that all takeoffs and landings had been halted as emergency personnel responded to an aircraft incident.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it was gathering more information on the incident.
American Airlines said on social media that it was “aware of reports that American Eagle flight 5342, operated by PSA, with service from Wichita, Kansas (ICT) to Washington Reagan National Airport (DCA) has been involved in an incident.”
American Airlines said it would provide more information as it became available to the company.
Over the last two years, a series of near-miss incidents have raised concerns about US aviation safety and the strain on understaffed air-traffic-control operations.
FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker stepped down on Jan. 20 and the Trump administration has not named a replacement — or even disclosed who is running the agency on an interim basis.
The last deadly major crash involving a commercial airliner in the US was in 2009, when 49 people aboard a Colgan Air flight crashed in New York state. One person also died on the ground.
An aircraft is down near Washington’s Reagan Airport, and takeoffs and landings are halted
ARLINGTON, Virginia: An aircraft went down near Ronald Reagan National Airport on Wednesday night, and all takeoffs and landings have been halted, according to the airport and law enforcement.
Multiple helicopters, including those from the US Park Police and the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and US military, were flying over the scene of the incident in the Potomac River. D.C. Fire and EMS said on X that fireboats were on the scene.
Washington, D.C., police said on the social platform X that multiple agencies are conducting a search and rescue effort in the Potomac River after an aircraft crash.
Video from an observation camera at the nearby Kennedy Center shows two sets of lights consistent with aircraft appearing to join in a fireball.
The airport said emergency personnel were responding to “an aircraft incident on the airfield.”
No other details were immediately available.
Trump issues orders to promote school choice, end “anti-American” teaching
- Order prioritizes federal funding for school choice programs
- Second order aims to block federal funding related to “gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology” in schools
President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed executive orders to promote parental choice in school selection and end federal funding for curricula that he called the “indoctrination” of students in “anti-American” ideologies on race and gender.
The two directives, which come a week after Trump was sworn into his second term of office, are in keeping with his campaign promise to remake the country’s education system in line with a rigorous conservative agenda that Democrats say could undermine public schools.
The first order directs the Department of Education to issue guidance on how states can use federal education funds to support “choice initiatives,” without providing further details.
“It is the policy of my Administration to support parents in choosing and directing the upbringing and education of their children,” the president said in the order. “Too many children do not thrive in their assigned, government-run K-12 school.”
His second directive aims to stop schools from using federal funds for curriculum, teacher certification and other purposes related to “gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology.”
“In recent years, however, parents have witnessed schools indoctrinate their children in radical, anti-American ideologies while deliberately blocking parental oversight,” it reads.
Trump and his allies throughout the campaign have accused public schools of teaching white children to be ashamed of themselves and their ancestors due to the country’s history of slavery and discrimination against people of color.
The second order, without evidence, claims that teachers have been “demanding acquiescence” to concepts of “white privilege” or “unconscious bias” and thereby promoting racism and undermining national unity.
The executive order will have a “chilling effect” on subjects related to race and ethnicity in schools, said Basil Smikle Jr., a political strategist.
“I would imagine that it would restrict the kind of reading materials that are even available to students outside of the classroom,” he said.
Although that order does not invoke the term “critical race theory” by name, it employs the language often used by CRT opponents to criticize teaching about institutional racism.
A once-obscure academic concept, the theory has become a fixture in the fierce US debate over how to teach children about the country’s history and structural racism. An academic framework most often taught in law schools but not in primary and secondary schools, it rests on the premise that racial bias — intentional or not — is baked into US laws and institutions.
Conservatives have invoked the term to denounce curricula they consider too liberal or excessively focused on America’s history of racial discrimination. Supporters say understanding institutional racism is necessary to address inequality.
Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University, said the order came as no surprise.
“As a candidate, he said there was radical indoctrination of students,” she said. “He’s making sure to frighten students and educators across the country so they can’t teach the real history of the United States.”
It was not clear how the order issued on Wednesday would affect how the history of race relations is taught in American schools. During his inaugural address last week, Trump criticized education that “teaches our children to be ashamed of themselves — in many cases, to hate our country.”
SCHOOL CHOICE
The first order also directs the US Department of Education to prioritize federal funding for school choice programs, a longstanding goal for conservatives who say public schools are failing to meet academic standards while pushing liberal ideas.
Many Democrats and teachers’ unions, on the other hand, say school choice undermines the public system that educates 50 million US children.
Federal test scores released by the National Assessment of Educational Progress on Wednesday underscored the challenge faced by educators in the wake of widespread learning loss during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The scores showed that one-third of eighth graders tested below NAEP’s “basic” reading level, the most in the test’s three-decade history, while some 40 percent of fourth-graders also fell below that basic threshold.
That executive order also directs US states on how they could use block grants to support alternatives to public education, such as private and religious schools.
US education is primarily funded via states and local taxes, with federal sources accounting for about 14 percent of the funding of public K-12 schools, according to Census data.
Trump’s order could affect some $30 billion to $40 billion in federal grants, estimated Frederick Hess, an education expert at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.
“This stuff is directionally significant,” said Hess, adding that Trump’s directive represented “the most emphatic support for school choice we’ve ever seen at the federal level.”
The first order also calls for allowing military families to use Pentagon funds to send their children to the school of their choosing. It also mandates that Native American families with students in the Bureau of Indian Education be allowed to use federal funds in selecting their schools.
A number of Republican-leaning states have in recent years adopted universal or near-universal school choice policies, paving the way for vouchers or other methods that allocate taxpayer funds for homeschooling or private tuition.
Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University, said that Trump’s executive order is aimed at sending “an aggressive statement about his position on vouchers” even if his power to reallocate funds is limited.
Cowen said the bigger potential financial impact on education lies with a bill reintroduced in Congress this week that would create a federal school voucher program with an estimated $10 billion in annual tax credits.
Rohingya refugees stranded on boat off Indonesia
- Authorities block migrants from disembarking at tourist beach ‘in case they escape’
JAKARTA: At least 75 Rohingya refugees including four children were stranded aboard a migrant boat off the coast of western Indonesia on Wednesday after authorities blocked them from landing at a tourist beach.
Security officers prevented the Rohingya from disembarking at Leuge beach in Aceh province and ordered them to stay aboard the boat. Police were deployed to monitor the beach, while local residents took photos of the boat and provided the refugees with food.
“For now, they are not allowed to disembark, considering today is a public holiday. Many tourist activities are taking place ... there are concerns that they might blend in with the crowd and escape,” local official Rizalihadi said.
“The temporary policy is for them to remain on the boat while waiting for representatives from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration to arrive.”
The Muslim minority Rohingya are persecuted in Myanmar, and thousands risk their lives each year on long and dangerous sea journeys to Malaysia or Indonesia.
Meta agrees to pay $25 million to settle lawsuit from Trump after Jan. 6 suspension
WASHINGTON: Meta has agreed to pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump against the company after it suspended his accounts following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, according to three people familiar with the matter.
It’s the latest instance of a large corporation settling litigation with the president, who has threatened retribution on his critics and rivals, and comes as Meta and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, have joined other large technology companies in trying to ingratiate themselves with the new Trump administration.
The people familiar with the matter spoke on the condition of anonymity Wednesday to discuss the agreement. Two people said that terms of the agreement include $22 million going to the nonprofit that will become Trump’s future presidential library and the balance going to legal fees and other litigants.
Zuckerberg visited Trump in November at his private Florida club as part of a series of technology, business and government officials to make a pilgrimage to Palm Beach to try to mend fences with the incoming president. At the dinner, Trump brought up the litigation and suggested they try to resolve it, kickstarting two months of negotiations between the parties, the people said.
Meta also made a $1 million donation to Trump’s inaugural committee and Zuckerberg was among several billionaires granted prime seating during Trump’s swearing-in last week in the Capitol Rotunda, along with Google’s Sundar Pichai, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, who now owns the platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
Ahead of Trump’s inauguration, Meta also announced that it was dropping fact-checking on its platform — a longtime priority of Trump and his allies.
Trump filed the suit months after leaving office, calling the action by the social media companies “illegal, shameful censorship of the American people.”
Twitter, Facebook and Google are all private companies, and users must agree to their terms of service to use their products. Under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, social media platforms are allowed to moderate their services by removing posts that, for instance, are obscene or violate the services’ own standards, so long as they are acting in “good faith.” The law also generally exempts Internet companies from liability for the material that users post.
But Trump and some other politicians have long argued that X, formerly known as Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms, have abused that protection and should lose their immunity — or at least have it curtailed.
The Meta settlement comes after ABC News agreed last month to pay $15 million toward Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll.
The network also agreed to pay $1 million in legal fees to the law firm of Trump’s attorney, Alejandro Brito.
The settlement agreement describes ABC’s presidential library payment as a “charitable contribution,” with the money earmarked for a non-profit organization that is being established in connection with the yet-to-be-built library.
The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the settlement.
