El Shafee Elsheikh was born in Sudan and grew up in west London. In 2012, aged 23, he travelled to Syria and joined the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, the group designated by the United States as a foreign terrorist organization. Federal prosecutors in Virginia charged that over the next three years he took part in a scheme that held 26 hostages, negotiated with their families and governments for ransom, and led to the deaths of at least eight of them, among them four Americans: James Foley, Kayla Mueller, Steven Sotloff and Peter Kassig.
He was captured in January 2018 by the Syrian Democratic Forces, held in American military custody from October 2019, and flown to Alexandria, Virginia, in October 2020. On April 14, 2022, a federal jury in the Eastern District of Virginia convicted him on all eight counts of the indictment. On August 19, 2022, Judge T. S. Ellis III sentenced him to eight concurrent life terms. The Justice Department described him as the highest-ranking ISIS fighter to face a jury trial in the United States. The Fourth Circuit affirmed the convictions and sentences on June 7, 2024.
The case turned on identity and on a legal theory of shared responsibility. Elsheikh was not accused of killing any hostage himself. Prosecutors charged that he joined an agreement to hold hostages for ransom and political demands and that deaths resulted from it, and the hostage-taking statute carries a mandatory life term when a death results. His defense did not dispute that he fought for ISIS. It argued that the government had not proved he was one of the foreign fighters who guarded and negotiated over the hostages. The jury took less than a day to reject that argument.
He was born on July 16, 1988 in Sudan and was raised in west London. The Justice Department describes him as a former British citizen, and the indictment states that he and Alexanda Amon Kotey, a second Briton, were radicalized in London and left for Syria in 2012. Their British citizenship was later revoked. Kotey was captured with him in 2018 and was charged with the same offenses.
Elsheikh went to Syria in 2012 and joined ISIS, and over about three years he and others held foreign hostages, including four U.S. citizens. Several of those hostages were killed, and ISIS published videos of some of the killings. The indictment fixed the conspiracy between November 2012 and February 7, 2015.
James Wright Foley grew up in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. He was seized in northwest Syria on November 22, 2012, the earliest of the four, and his death was announced in a video released on August 19, 2014. He was 40.
Steven Joel Sotloff, from Miami, Florida, was taken north of Aleppo on August 4, 2013. A video released on September 2, 2014, announced his death. He was 31 and held joint American and Israeli citizenship.
Peter Edward Kassig came from Indiana. He was taken on October 1, 2013. His death was announced in November 2014. He was 26.
Kayla Jean Mueller, of Prescott, Arizona, was 26. She was taken in Aleppo in August 2013. Her death was confirmed in February 2015 and announced publicly on February 10, 2015.
The indictment treated the four seizures as the American core of a larger scheme. Foley was taken in November 2012, Mueller and Sotloff in August 2013, and Kassig in October 2013. Videos of killings released between August and October 2014 named Foley, Sotloff and two British citizens, David Haines and Alan Henning. Two Japanese citizens, Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto, were reported dead in videos released in January 2015. The indictment also referred to a Russian hostage killed around February 2014 and a Syrian prisoner killed around April 2014.
The government's case described a conspiracy that reached well beyond the four Americans. Twenty-six hostages were held in Syria between 2012 and 2015, and they were of many nationalities: American, British, French, Italian, Danish, German, Spanish, Swedish, Belgian, Swiss, Russian, Japanese and New Zealand. The Justice Department said that Elsheikh took part in the detention of and negotiations over the four Americans and over hostages from most of the other countries, and that he and two other ISIS members supervised the group's detention facilities. The indictment alleged that he helped move hostages between facilities, and that between November 2013 and February 2015 he and Kotey coordinated ransom negotiations with Western families and governments by email.
At trial, the prosecution called a Danish hostage negotiator, who described long efforts to secure the release of one Danish hostage in exchange for 2 million euros, and an Italian hostage who was released on May 25, 2014. The Justice Department said the hostages were detained to pressure their families and governments for ransoms and other concessions.
The government's theory for the American deaths was therefore a conspiracy theory. The hostage-taking statute, 18 U.S.C. 1203, covers seizing or detaining a person and threatening to kill or injure or to continue detaining him in order to compel a third party to act, and it covers conspiracies to do so. Where a death results, the penalty is death or life imprisonment. Prosecutors told the jury that they did not need to prove Elsheikh planned or carried out any killing. They needed to prove that he agreed to take part in the scheme and that deaths followed.
On March 30, 2017, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control added Elsheikh to its list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists. The entry gave his location as Aleppo, Syria, his date of birth as July 16, 1988, his place of birth as Sudan and his citizenship as United Kingdom.
In January 2018 the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish-led force that controlled much of northeast Syria, captured Elsheikh and Kotey. Elsheikh was held by the Syrian Democratic Forces for about a year and then passed into American custody. In early October 2019, as Turkey opened an offensive in northeast Syria, the United States moved the two men out of Syria to Iraq as a precaution. President Donald Trump announced the transfer on October 9, 2019. Officials said the United States remained committed to seeing them brought to justice, and the United Kingdom's Foreign Office said that foreign ISIS fighters should face justice whatever their nationality.
Where they would be tried was undecided. Britain had no death penalty and had resisted sharing evidence that could support one. The United States had sent a mutual legal assistance request to the United Kingdom in June 2015 for evidence about the group. In June 2018 the Home Secretary agreed to provide it without a death penalty assurance, and that decision was challenged in the British courts. On March 25, 2020, the UK Supreme Court held unanimously that the decision breached the Data Protection Act 2018, because the statutory requirements for transferring personal data had not been properly assessed. A majority rejected the argument that the common law barred such cooperation, and the justices were divided on the wider question.
The impasse was broken by a letter dated August 18, 2020, from Attorney General William Barr to the Home Secretary. It said the United States would not seek the death penalty against either man if the evidence was provided, and that any death sentence imposed would not be carried out. It also set a deadline of October 15, 2020: if the British litigation was not resolved and the evidence not provided by then, the United States would proceed with plans to transfer the men to Iraq for prosecution. British authorities shared the evidence, and the Justice Department decided that prosecutors would not seek a death sentence in the case.
On October 7, 2020, the Justice Department announced an eight-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia. Elsheikh, then 32, and Kotey, 36, arrived in Alexandria in FBI custody the same day. They appeared that evening before U.S. Magistrate Judge Theresa C. Buchanan, were told of the charges, were given court-appointed lawyers and were remanded to the custody of the U.S. Marshals. At the arraignment on Friday, October 9, Elsheikh and Kotey pleaded not guilty by videolink before Judge Ellis and waived their right to a speedy trial; the judge called the case complex and unusual and said he wanted a trial as soon as possible. The case number was 1:20-cr-239.
The counts, as the Justice Department set them out, were conspiracy to commit hostage taking resulting in death; four counts of hostage taking resulting in death; conspiracy to murder U.S. citizens outside the United States; conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists resulting in death; and conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization resulting in death. Five of the eight counts carried a mandatory life term on conviction.
The indictment described Elsheikh as an ISIS fighter who took part in seizing hostages, helped supervise detention facilities and moved hostages between them. It alleged that from November 2013 to February 2015 he and Kotey coordinated the ransom negotiations by email. Kotey pleaded guilty to all eight counts on September 2, 2021, under an agreement that took the death penalty off the table. He was sentenced to life on April 29, 2022, by the same judge, before Elsheikh's own sentencing. His agreement allows him to be moved to British custody if Britain agrees to hold him for the rest of his life.
The defense moved to exclude statements Elsheikh had made after his capture. In media interviews given after his capture he had described his dealings with hostages, and he had also been questioned by American officials. He argued that the Syrian Democratic Forces had mistreated him into giving false statements, and that he had been interviewed 26 times by American personnel before anyone advised him of his rights.
Judge Ellis held a three-day hearing in 2021 and ruled in early January 2022 that the statements could be used at trial. He found the claims of mistreatment unsupported by the testimony he had heard. On the questioning, he found the process legally permissible: a separate team of interrogators took over after the first 26 interviews, advised Elsheikh of his rights and collected information only from the later sessions. The trial was set for late March 2022.
Jury selection began on March 29, 2022, in the federal courthouse in Alexandria, before Judge Ellis and a jury of twelve. The trial lasted about two weeks. The government called 35 witnesses, among them former hostages, FBI agents and negotiators. About ten of the witnesses were former European and Syrian hostages.
The central problem for the prosecution was that the captors had worn masks around the hostages. The first surviving hostage to testify, an Italian national who had been taken in March 2013, said the captors covered nearly all of their faces, so that identification rested on voices, accents, phrasing and behavior. A French hostage released in 2014 pointed toward Elsheikh in the courtroom but did not explicitly identify him. Through the first week of testimony, none of the former hostages who had appeared had identified him as one of the captors.
The government's identification case therefore rested on Elsheikh's own words. Prosecutors played clips of the media interviews in which he said that he had gathered information from hostages, including family email addresses, and used it to seek ransoms, and an intelligence briefing in which he said he had contacted the Norwegian and Japanese consulates about ransoms. A witness who had been held with Mueller also testified.
Elsheikh's lawyer, Nina Ginsberg, did not deny that he had traveled to Syria, joined ISIS or known Kotey. She argued that the government had not proved he was one of the foreign guards, that he was an ordinary ISIS soldier, and that no former hostage had identified him in the courtroom. She said he was a broken man when he gave the interviews and spoke to avoid being sent to Iraq. In closing, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Raj Parekh said the government had proved its case beyond any shadow of a doubt, and that "this defendant put the terror in terrorism himself."
The case went to the jury on Wednesday, April 13, 2022, after closing arguments. On Thursday, April 14, within a day of beginning its deliberations, the jury returned its verdict: guilty on all eight counts. Every conviction for hostage taking resulting in death carries a penalty of life or death, and the death penalty had been taken off the table. Sentencing was first set for August 12 and took place on August 19. The Justice Department said the evidence included testimony from 35 witnesses, videos and an email confirming Mueller's death.
Judge Ellis sentenced Elsheikh on August 19, 2022, the eighth anniversary of the release of the video announcing Foley's death. The sentence was eight concurrent terms of life imprisonment. Parekh told the court that the prosecution had unmasked the foreign captors, and called Elsheikh the highest-ranking ISIS member ever convicted in a U.S. court. Ellis condemned the conduct of Elsheikh and Kotey as barbaric, brutal, callous and criminal. He found that Elsheikh had been a leader in the hostage-taking conspiracy. He said that he could not have imposed a death sentence because prosecutors had not sought one.
Elsheikh's lawyers said he would appeal. They also asked the judge to recommend that he not be placed in the maximum-security facility in Colorado, where he would face lifelong solitary confinement. Ellis declined to make any recommendation and left the choice to the Bureau of Prisons. Elsheikh did not address the court. Because he had gone to trial, there was no agreement allowing a transfer to Britain, and he must serve his life terms in the United States.
Elsheikh appealed to the Fourth Circuit in Richmond (No. 22-4496). A panel of Circuit Judges Agee, Quattlebaum and Heytens heard argument on March 22, 2024, and issued a published per curiam opinion on June 7, 2024, affirming his convictions and life sentences.
The court addressed four evidentiary challenges. On false identity statements made at the time of capture, it assumed without deciding that the routine booking exception to the Miranda rule did not apply, and held that any error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt given the other evidence of guilt. On the statements to FBI agents, it held that they were admissible: the Defense Department and the FBI had not coordinated a deliberate two-step interrogation, there were in any case sufficient curative measures, his waiver of his rights was knowing and voluntary, and the district court did not clearly err in finding that he had not invoked a right to counsel. On the 2019 media interviews, it found no clear error in the finding that they were voluntary and were not the product of abuse by the Syrian Democratic Forces, crediting witness testimony over his own declaration. On statements by hostages who could not testify, it held that the district court had not abused its discretion in admitting them under the forfeiture-by-wrongdoing rule, because the evidence supported a finding that the captors intended, at least in part, to prevent the hostages from testifying. It also upheld the admission of brief testimony from a former hostage, referred to as Jane Doe, as relevant context that was not unfairly prejudicial. A further challenge, to certain documents, was treated as waived.
Elsheikh is serving eight concurrent life terms in federal custody following the Fourth Circuit's decision of June 7, 2024. Kotey, who pleaded guilty, is also serving a life term.
The charges used statutes that apply to conduct abroad. The hostage-taking statute, 18 U.S.C. 1203, makes it an offense to seize or detain a person and to threaten to kill or injure him, or to keep detaining him, to compel a third party or a government to act as a condition of his release; attempts and conspiracies are included. For conduct outside the United States it applies where the offender or the person seized is a U.S. national, where the offender is found in the United States, or where the government being compelled is the United States. Where a death results the penalty is death or life imprisonment. That is why a conviction on the four hostage-taking counts left the judge with no sentencing discretion once the government had given up the death penalty.
Two further counts rest on 18 U.S.C. 2339B, which prohibits knowingly providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, including by conspiracy. The base penalty is up to 20 years, and where a death results it rises to any term of years or life. The statute carries extraterritorial jurisdiction, including where the offender is later brought into the United States. The conspiracy to murder U.S. citizens abroad count falls under 18 U.S.C. 2332(b)(2), which covers a conspiracy by two or more persons to commit a killing that is murder, where at least one of them does an overt act toward its object; the penalty is a term of years or life.
The prosecution also turned on the death penalty. Britain's long-standing policy against assisting capital prosecutions without assurances, tested in the UK Supreme Court in March 2020, meant that evidence from British sources reached the American prosecutors only after the Attorney General's assurance of August 2020. The life terms were the most severe sentence available, because the government did not seek death.
Whether Elsheikh was one of the foreign guards who dealt with the hostages was the main contested issue at trial. The defense accepted that he had fought for ISIS but argued that identity had not been proved, since the captors wore masks, no former hostage identified him in the courtroom, and the case depended on interviews he gave after capture. The jury convicted on all counts, and Judge Ellis later found that he had been a leader in the conspiracy.
Elsheikh was not accused of killing any hostage himself. The convictions rest on his agreement to take part in the hostage-taking conspiracy and on the finding that deaths resulted from it. The deaths of the four Americans were charged as hostage taking resulting in death, not as murder, and the counts covering the British and Japanese victims were conspiracy counts.
Elsheikh also said that the statements he gave after capture were not voluntary. Judge Ellis rejected that claim after a three-day hearing in 2021, and the Fourth Circuit found no clear error in the finding.
July 16, 1988: El Shafee Elsheikh is born in Sudan.
2012: He goes to Syria and joins ISIS.
November 22, 2012: Foley is seized in northwest Syria.
August 2013: Sotloff and Mueller are taken.
October 1, 2013: Kassig is taken.
November 2013: The period of the alleged ransom negotiations by email begins.
August 19, 2014: A video announces Foley's death.
September 2, 2014: A video announces Sotloff's death.
November 2014: Kassig's death is announced.
January 2015: Videos announce the deaths of two Japanese citizens.
February 2015: Mueller's death is confirmed.
June 2015: The United States asks the UK for evidence.
March 30, 2017: Treasury designates Elsheikh a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.
January 2018: The Syrian Democratic Forces capture Elsheikh and Kotey.
October 9, 2019: The United States announces that it holds the two men.
March 25, 2020: The UK Supreme Court rules on the evidence-sharing decision.
August 18, 2020: The Attorney General writes to the Home Secretary.
October 7, 2020: Indictment announced; Elsheikh arrives in Alexandria, Virginia.
September 2, 2021: Kotey pleads guilty.
January 2022: Judge Ellis rules Elsheikh's statements can be used at trial.
March 29, 2022: Jury selection begins.
April 14, 2022: The jury convicts Elsheikh on all eight counts.
April 29, 2022: Kotey is sentenced to life.
August 19, 2022: Elsheikh receives eight concurrent life terms.
March 22, 2024: The Fourth Circuit hears argument.
June 7, 2024: The Fourth Circuit affirms the convictions and sentences.