A jihadist from the Islamic State (IS) group, tried for two weeks in the United States for his role in the capture and execution of Western hostages, exercised his right to remain silent on Tuesday April 12.
The voice of El Shafee el-Sheikh, 33, echoed in federal court in Alexandria, near Washington, for the first time since his trial began.
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“
Would you like to testify?
asked Judge TS Ellis.
"
No
", succinctly replied this man accused of having been part of a team of particularly cruel jailers nicknamed "
the Beatles
" by their prisoners because of their British accent.
His lawyers are hardly shown to be more talkative: as exculpatory evidence, they content themselves with showing video extracts from interviews he gave to journalists after his capture by Syrian Kurdish forces in 2018. Contrary to his current position , he admitted in these interviews to have been one of the “
Beatles
”.
His lawyers intend to plead that he lied in order to be transferred to the United States and avoid being judged expeditiously and hanged in Iraq.
"
A confession could speed up the process
," he said in one of the excerpts released on Tuesday.
In other extracts presented by the prosecution in recent days, however, he gave particularly precise details of the abuse inflicted on certain hostages.
27 victims
A dozen former captives - out of the 27 victims of the "
Beatles
" - have paraded on the witness stand since the start of the trial and confirmed some of these details, describing particularly "
sadistic
" and violent men.
Last to speak, Danish photographer Daniel Rye Ottosen told on Tuesday how they gave him 25 blows on his 25th birthday, placed a sword against his neck or a gun in his mouth to terrorize him.
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Wednesday will be devoted to the indictment of the prosecutor and the argument of the defence.
The jurors will then retire to deliberate.
They will have to rule on eight charges, mainly related to the death of four American hostages: journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and humanitarians Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller.
The first three were beheaded and their deaths staged in excruciating propaganda videos.
The young woman died in confused circumstances after being raped by IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
As for the other "
Beatles
": one, Mohammed Emwazi, died in a drone attack in 2015, and another, Alexanda Kotey, is being held in the United States where he is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty.
