Another British-born ISIS executioner, a follower of the notorious “Jihadi John” (Mohammed Emwazi), has been identified by British and American intelligence services as Londoner Alexanda Kotey, 32, one of four ISIS Brits, dubbed “the Beatles” because of their accents, who are responsible for beheading 27 hostages, BuzzFeed News and the Washington Post reported Sunday. Kotey, as was to be expected, has been described as a “quiet and humble” football fan from west London.
Quiet football fan? Shouldn’t that have been a dead giveaway?
Oxymorons aside, in 2009 the future ISIS beheader participated in Viva Palestina, which was planned and organized by then British MP George Galloway of running a convoy of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, shuttling “provision from the UK of food, medicine and essential goods and services needed by the civilian population” and, meanwhile, “highlighting the causes and results of wars with a view to achieving peace.”
Incidentally, our good friends at Ha’aretz misread the Post/Buzzfeed and reported that Quiet Kotey (he was either Ringo or George, according to reports by European hostages who were released after their governments had paid ransom) participated in the Gaza flotilla, which made for a great headline, but, alas, not factual.
The Viva Palestina venture, for which George Galloway had raised close to $2 million, almost didn’t happen, as, on February 20, Lancashire Police arrested nine of the volunteers under the Terrorism Act a day before the convoy’s launch. Viva Palestina reported an 80% drop in donations after the broadcast of the arrests and the allegations, but all of the arrested participants were subsequently released without charge. The convoy went across north Africa and finally arrived in Gaza via the Rafah crossing on March 9, 2009, accompanied by about 180 additional trucks donated by the Gaddafi (remember him?) Foundation.
So Quiet Kotey left Britain in 2009 and traveled to the Gaza Strip with the Galloway convoy. A friend who traveled in the same convoy told Buzzfeed he lost track of Kotey after reaching Gaza and does not know whether he ever returned to Britain – but has since heard that he is in Syria.
A spokesman for Galloway told Buzzfeed: “There was, of course, a vetting procedure on those who applied to join the convoy,” and claimed that “the names you have given are unknown to us.”
The Post quotes a Danish hostage, Daniel Rye, who was released in June 2014, and who wrote in a memoir how Ringo viciously kicked him 25 times in his ribs on his 25th birthday, saying it was a gift. George, according to Rye, was the most violent and unpredictable. So, either way, our chap was an active sort.
Rye also recalled how the hostages were taken to an open grave where a suspected spy was shot and killed. He said Emwazi killed the man while Ringo filmed and George directed the episode. Rye said the Britons made him and other hostages climb into the grave and then photographed them.