Al Shafie Sheikh
What was going on in the minds of my parents, a member of the “beetle” cell in the Islamic State, defender Sheikh, was that their son, who bears the name of one of the most prominent trade union figures and the Sudanese communist figure, the defender, Ahmed Al-Sheikh, would become an extremist jihadist who would not hesitate to practice the worst forms of torture against his victims in defense of the “Islamic Caliphate”.
Al-Shafie was indicted by a U.S. federal court on charges of committing terrorist acts, participating in the abduction and killing of U.S. citizens, and providing support to a terrorist organization. He is expected to be sentenced to life in prison.
Al-Shafei was a member of an ISIS cell that carried out kidnappings and executions of journalists and Western aid workers.
The cell was named “The Beatles” because of the English accents of its members. The cell was involved in the abduction of at least 27 people in Syria between 2012 and 2015, most of them from the United States, Denmark, France, Japan, Norway and Spain. Some of the abductees were released after their governments paid a ransom for their release.
The organization has posted on the Internet horrific recordings of the execution of several hostages for propaganda purposes for the organization. Reports said U.S. aide Kayla Mueller, who was abducted from the cell, was handed over to the organisation’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who repeatedly raped her before killing her, according to reports, the organization said. that she was killed in an air strike.
The Syrian Democratic Forces had arrested Sheikh and Another member of the cell is British Alexanda Amon Kotey, 37, in January 2018 as they were trying to flee to Turkey.
In October 2020, they surrendered to US forces in Iraq and then transferred to Virginia, where they were charged with hostage-taking, conspiracy to kill American citizens and support of a foreign terrorist organization.
The Sheikh’s trial, which was revoked by the British government, began only after the United States received intelligence information about him from the British side in exchange for his non-execution.
published photo, UNKNOWN / HO THROUGH POLICE MEETING, KOTEY, Leaflet
From left: Mohamed Emwazi, Ian Davis, Alexanda Kotey, Shafee Elsheikh
left the family
Al-Shafi` comes from a communist-leaning family and takes the name of the prominent communist leader, Al-Shafi` Ahmed Al-Sheikh, who was executed during the rule of Jaafar Nimeiri in 1971.
Al-Shafee was one of the fiercest fighters to join the Islamic State and was responsible for torturing Western hostages, despite his denials.
According to the testimonies of several detainees who were released after their governments paid the ransom, the mediator was the most violent and savage of the Beatles, and most of them beat and abused the hostages, in addition to the executions he carried out. .
The hostages referred to the defenders as “Gringo” or “Jihadist George”.
Spanish journalist Javier Spinoza, who was being held in the same prison where Western hostages were being held, described him as the most brutal and insane.
His father is Rashid Sayed Ahmed, spokesman for the Sudanese Communist Party in Britain, and his mother is Maha al-Jazuli, the sister of communist leader Kamal al-Jazuli.
published photo, Unknown
It is believed that Muhammad Emwazi or Jihadi John was the leader of the group and was killed in an airstrike in 2015
His father worked for Sudan Airways and applied for asylum in Britain in the early 1990s, and his wife followed him after 4 years, and they were granted a residence permit in 1994 and in the middle of 1996 separated.
Shafee, born in Omdurman, Sudan, in 1989, has an older brother, Khaled, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison after being convicted of possession of a firearm for use in 2008.
London police arrested Khaled after the murder of a member of a drug trafficking gang who had a quarrel with his brother Shafee.
As for his younger brother, Mahmoud, who was born in Britain, he joined him in Syria months after he arrived there and was killed in the city of Tikrit, Iraq in 2015, and is believed to have carried out an attack. suicidal.
as his generation
His mother, Maha al-Jazouli, told the Washington Post in 2016 that her son was like the other youngsters of his generation in London and he was healthy, as his friends called him, a Queens Park Rangers fan. and he worked as one. mechanic in a car repair shop without attracting the attention of British security services.
When he was eleven years old, he joined a youth organization affiliated with the British Army and spent 3 happy years there, according to his mother.
Al-Shafea’s life changed when his older brother Khaled was imprisoned and they felt lost after they separated from each other.
Like another member of the group, Alexanda Kotey, Al-Shafea grew up in Shepherdsbush in west London and attended the Al-Manar Mosque in the same neighborhood.
According to the mother, the signs of change appeared to the mediator in 2011 when one of his oldest friends introduced him to the teachings and ideas of the extremist Egyptian cleric living in London, Hani al-Sibai, who is a European, American subject. and international. sanctions because of his support for al-Qaeda.
His mother once saw him watching a video sermon by al-Sibai in which he spoke of the “virtues of martyrdom for the sake of God.” His mother asked him: Mediator, do you want to run away and die? He answered in the negative.
The newspaper quoted a family friend as saying that the mother had a long debate with her son about the principles of Islam and did not agree, and that the mediator said to his mother one day, “God says your mother can become your enemy.”
Some of the victims of the group: (top left) Abd al-Rahman Kassig, Stephen Sotloff, James Foley, Kenji Goto, David Haines, Alan Henning
Al-Shafi’i quit his job at a mechanics workshop in the Shepherdsbush neighborhood where his family lives and began selling oriental perfumes and distributing Islamic publications in front of the Shepherdsbush metro station after growing a beard and wearing a cloak.
Al-Shafi’i persuaded his younger brother, Mahmud, to attend Friday sermons at the mosque with him.
According to the mother, the mediator touched Mahmud, who embraced the same extremist ideas and started wearing Afghan clothes and growing a beard.
According to the mother, the lips changed with amazing speed and turned into a completely different person in less than 20 days.
Al-Shafi ‘married an Ethiopian woman living in Canada in 2010 and the woman was unable to join him in Britain due to the refusal of British authorities to grant her an entry visa.
Al-Shafee, who speaks fluent Arabic, went to Syria in April 2012 and joined the Al-Nusra Front, which is loyal to al-Qaeda, before the emergence of Islamic State.
The mother was very worried about her son Mahmud, who was seventeen years old, and was afraid that he would reach his patron saint, so he took him to Sudan to keep him away from the environment where he lives in London and seek the help of the family. its to discourage him from joining the patron saint. The mother asked the British embassy to confiscate Mahmud’s passport, but the embassy refused because he is British at the age of seventeen and his passport cannot be confiscated.
published photo, Reuters
Sheikh in adolescence
The mother got Mahmud’s passport, but he was able to get another one from the British Embassy there. Sudanese extremists bought a plane ticket for Mahmoud to Turkey, so he flew there and reunited with his brother al-Shafi` there.
When the mother learned of the death of her young son, Mahmud, she sought the whereabouts of cleric Hani al-Sibai, who planted extremist ideas in her sons’s heads and “slapped him in the face,” according to her, and shouted: What did you do to my son?
During his stay in Syria, Al-Shafi ‘married a Syrian woman and they had a daughter, and his Canadian wife followed him, and he had a son named after his younger brother Mahmud.
During his stay in Syria, Al-Shafie kept in touch with his family in Britain and his daughter bears the name of his mother, Maha.
According to British intelligence officials, Al-Shafee and the rest of the beetle cell were assigned to guard Western hostages held by ISIS in the organization’s capital, Raqqa.
The four of them practiced the most horrific forms of torture on prisoners and slaughtered seven foreigners in front of the camera, in addition to 18 Syrian soldiers.
They tortured prisoners with electric shocks, simulated strangulation and crucified them.
Some former inmates who were in the jail run by the Beetles team in Raqqa gave horrific evidence of the brutal tortures they underwent on the inmates of the group.
French journalist Didier Francois, who was abducted in 2013 and held captive for 10 months, said the cell members were extremely violent and sadistic.
The prisoners were kneeling on the ground, facing the wall, when cell members entered the prison in masks while in prison. They called the prisoners by dog names and forced them to beat each other out of amusement. The prisoners were beaten so violently that their bones were broken and their teeth pulled out, according to Francois.
The prisoners called him George al-Shafee, accusing him of being primarily responsible for the torture, while his lawyers say he was merely a mere fighter in the organization and had nothing to do with the killing and torture of prisoners.