LONDON: British Daesh fighters Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh — part of a group dubbed the “Beatles” — have exposed the details of senior commanders of the terrorist group who planned attacks in Europe.
The pair, half of a four-man team accused of torturing and executing Western hostages, have given up vital information to US interrogators about Daesh plans in Europe.
French news outlet Mediapart made the report, which comes as Elsheikh, 33, prepares for trial in the US next month for his involvement in the murder of British and American hostages in Syria. He has pleaded not guilty.
But his accomplice Kotey, 38, has pleaded guilty to helping to kidnap, torture and murder four US citizens. He will return to Britain after 15 years of imprisonment to spend the rest of his life behind bars after he agreed to meet the families of the victims.
Mediaparts said the two men surrendered details about their Daesh commanders after US troops captured them, giving names of those who offered hostage-taking and planned the 2015 Paris attacks and other European incidents.
Both men said that Abu Loqman, the head of Daesh’s brutal secret service, led the terror group’s hostages operation.
Elsheikh and Kotey reported to Mohammed Emwazi — the infamous British Daesh member known as Jihadi John — who was himself overseen by “Abu Ahmed al-Iraqi,” identified by Elsheikh as Belgian national Oussama Atar, who is on trial in absentia in France but presumed to have died in the conflict.
