Slain US journalist Steven Sotloff also held Israeli citizenship: Reports

US journalist Steven Sotloff, whose videotaped murder by the jihadist Islamic State group shocked the world, also held Israeli nationality, Israeli media reported on Wednesday. Haaretz newspaper cited a foreign ministry spokesman as saying that Sotloff, 31, held dual citizenship, although the ministry made no immediate comment when contacted by AFP. Public radio reported that Sotloff’s family, who live in Miami, Florida, is Jewish and that he had studied in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv. The Islamic State made no reference to Sotloff being either Jewish or Israeli in the video it posted. [caption id=“attachment_1694987” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Screengrab from the video of Sotloff’s murder. AP image[/caption] His masked executioner said the killing was in retaliation for expanded US air strikes against jihadist fighters in Iraq over the past week. Sotloff, a 31-year-old Miami-area native who freelanced for Time and Foreign Policy magazines, vanished in Syria in August 2013 and was not seen again until he appeared in a video released last month that showed Foley’s beheading. Dressed in an orange jumpsuit against an arid Syrian landscape, Sotloff was threatened in that video with death unless the US stopped airstrikes on the Islamic State. In the video distributed Tuesday and titled “A Second Message to America,” Sotloff appears in a similar jumpsuit before he is apparently beheaded by a fighter with the Islamic State, the extremist group that has conquered wide swaths of territory across Syria and Iraq and declared itself a caliphate. In the video, the organization threatens to kill another hostage, this one identified as a British citizen, David Cawthorne Haines. It was not immediately clear who Haines was. Britain and France called the killing “barbaric.” British Prime Minister David Cameron said in a statement that he would chair an emergency response meeting with his Cabinet on Wednesday to review the latest developments. AFP and AP