Steven Sotloff beheading: Here is what we know about the video

Coming just two weeks after the killing of US journalist James Foley and just days after a video by US journalist Steven Sotloff’s mother pleading for his life went viral, the video showing the beheading of Sotloff is being seen as evidence that the Islamic State was never serious about negotiating for the release of their Western hostages. In a video that showed stark similarities with the killing of Foley, the murderer is also shown threatening to similarly execute another hostage, British citizen David Haines. [caption id=“attachment_1694319” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  This image purports to show journalist Steven Sotloff being held by the militant group. AP[/caption] The Similarities In The Two Videos The similarities between the two killings include the location and  manner of killing, the rough editing, and the killer’s message. In both videos, the hostages are shown making statements against the US military action in the region, probably reading scripted speeches. Both videos show the hostages wearing a billowy orange jumpsuit and  lapel mics. And both videos begin to show the actual killing and then, as The Guardian reports, cut away. “It then shows footage of the body and separated head positioned on the desert floor.” The report adds that the Arabic subtitles, the font of the title cards, the structure of the video clips starting with a clip of President Obama talking about US action against Islamic State positions – all these are identical. The killer, in both videos, wears black and has his face covered, standing by his kneeling victim and delivering a speech. In the video showing Sotloff’s killing, the killer says: “I’m back, Obama, and I’m back because of your arrogant foreign policy towards the Islamic State.” You can read a complete transcript of Sotloff’s statement and the killer’s threats here. Who is Steven Sotloff? Sotloff was kidnapped in Benghazi in October 2012, while covering the terrorist raid on the US diplomatic offices there. He travelled to Syria that December, where he would go on to write about the conditions of impoverished Syrians displaced by war. According to a Reuters report, “I’ve been here over a week and no one wants freelance because of the kidnappings. It’s pretty bad here,” he e-mailed another journalist. “I’ve been sleeping at a front, hiding from tanks the past few nights, drinking rain water.” In a December 2012 post for Foreign Policy, he wrote in vivid detail about rising prices, the seven-hour wait daily for a three-kilo pack of pita bread, the occasional bombing of bread queues. A report in The Atlantic points his tweets, mostly about the human cost of war in Syria, but occasionally also about more mundane NBA games and more. The Reuters report quotes World Affairs publisher-editorJames Denton as saying of Sotloff: “He struck me as a very, very decent guy … he wasn’t chasing headlines, he wasn’t hyping a pitch… He wanted to get the story, he wanted to peel away the layers.” Denton met Sotloff over coffee in Washington in May 2013, and published two of his dispatches from Cairo the following July. In August, Sotloff was kidnapped, more or less vanishing until he reappeared first in the Foley video and now in that of his own killing. Is The Killer In Both Videos Jihadi John? Officials reportedly think that the killer in both videos is the same man, suspected to be ‘Hip hop Jihadi’ Abdel Majed Abdel Bary, who has also been called ‘Jihadi John’. Abdel Bary is reportedly a 23-year-old Brith-Egyptian rapper from West London who travelled to Syria last year to join the ISIS. He is the son of Adel Abdel Bary, an al Qaeda terrorist. Early last month, Abdel Bary tweeted a photo of himself wearing a hood and holding a severed head in one hand. The caption said: ‘Chillin’ with my homie, or what’s left of him.’ The senior Bary was reportedly handpicked by Ayman al Zawahiri in the 1990s to be one of Osama bin Laden’s top henchmen. He was extradited from England to the United States in 2012 for his alleged role in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. According to a report in The Daily Mail Abdel Bary left his “million-dollar home in Maida Vale, London” in August. The lyrics he raps have made references to his father’s incarceration and about the hardships of a family with “six siblings and a mum to feed”. The apparently incongruent blend of gangsta rap and jihad is worrying, observers have said, especially given the widespread attraction the Islamic State appears to have gained among Muslim youth in the West and elsewhere. A report in Politico says the extent of the threat that IS poses comes from the fact that “it includes men in its ranks whom you might expect to see in a nightclub rather than fighting in the desert for an organization that would, traditionally, whip you for listening to music”. The report continues, “In many ways, the world of hip hop runs parallel to and mirrors the place of Islam in many urban communities in the Western world. Hip hop provides a cultural frame of reference that allows followers to share social experiences they feel are not appreciated by wider society—whether that is poverty, racism, discrimination or dysfunction within their own community. It is, in some ways, the most significant social-protest music of our era.” Was there ever any hope for Sotloff? US officials reportedly believe that Sotloff and Foley may have been killed on the same day, indicating that the militants were never interested in negotiating their release. A report in Foreign Policy says the killer mentions airstrikes on Mosul Dam, but those in fact began on August 17, two days before the video showing Foley’s killing was released. “And US intelligence officials believe that Foley may have been killed as early as Aug. 15, meaning his killing was not a response to the Mosul Dam attacks. Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon’s spokesman, declined to comment on whether the Defense Department believes Sotloff was killed at the same time as Foley,” the report says. The killings and the videos could simply be aimed at turning public opinion in the US against the American military action in Iraq. However, a Huffington Post/YouGov poll showed that while there was wariness about additional investment in quelling the Iraqi insurgency, 66 percent of Americans actually favour the decision to conduct targetted airstrikes in Iraq while only 20 percent opposed it. The US government and its allies such as Australia have responded by sending in more troops – a move that will have few challengers even in the Middle East in the wake of this latest killing.  The reality is that ISIL’s methods and ideology have ensured its total isolation, and each bloody act makes it more vulnerable to collective military action aimed at its destruction.