Islamic State Beatles will be tried in US over beheading of British and American captives in Syria

The ISIS ‘Beatles’ will finally face trial in the US over the beheading of British and American captives in Syria after the Supreme Court in London overturned a ruling that stopped the UK sharing vital evidence with America.

Alexanda Kotey, 36, and El-Shafee El-Sheikh, 32, are accused of being members of the terror cell named after the Liverpudlian band by their captives which was behind the beheading of two British aid workers and two US journalists.

But a ruling at the Supreme Court in London this morning overturned a ban on the Home Office and UK Government sending evidence over to the US – meaning the duo could spend the rest of their lives in a maximum security prison in America.

The court’s initial judgement on data protection had said providing evidence for criminal proceedings where they could be executed breached their human rights.

The court had ruled after El-Sheikh’s mother Maha Elgizouli challenged the then home secretary Savid Javid’s initial decision to share the information in the case.

She believes her son should face justice but that any trial should take place in the UK, but the new development means Britain can now share information with the US.

Prosecutors in the US initially planned to seek Kotey and El-Sheikh’s execution – and the British government want the pair prosecuted in the US, where it is thought there is a more realistic chance of prosecution than in UK.

But the Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that Britain could not provide any assistance to US investigators when the threat of death hung over the two men.

Last week US Attorney General Bill Barr said capital punishment could be dropped in any cases against them in an effort to pave the way for the men – currently being held in military detention in Iraq – to finally face justice and stand trial in the US.

He set a two-month deadline for any transfer of evidence to begin or the pair would face justice in Iraq, where ISIS fighters are sentenced to hang after five-minute hearings.

However the new ruling means Kotey and El-Sheikh face a life sentence at the notorious ‘supermax’, formally known as the US Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado.

Speaking last week before the latest ruling, Mr Haines’ daughter Bethany told MailOnline: ‘We’ve waited over two years and have been let down by the UK legal system. The way this has been handled has been terrible.’

She added: ‘Rather than the two countries communicating privately, the US has used the press to communicate, which has made this so much harder than it needed to be.

‘In regards to Bill Barr’s threat to send them to Iraq if the deadline isn’t met, I think this is purely a political move.’

The men have previously said they fear a life sentence at the ‘hell on earth’ prison that for some people would be a ‘fate worse than the death penalty’.

Kotey, of Ladbroke Grove, West London, told the Daily Mirror last year that he and El-Sheikh agreed that being convicted in the US would be a terrible scenario.

He said: ‘I would not want to spend time in a prison in the US. That would not be good. That would be the worst thing that could happen.’

El-Sheikh and Kotey, who were caught in January 2018, are accused of belonging to a brutal four-man cell of executioners in Syria, nicknamed ‘the Beatles’.

At the supermax jail in Colorado, the grounds are patrolled by attack dogs and the towers are manned with sharpshooters.

It is home to 490 convicted terrorists, gang leaders and neo-Nazis. Many have been transferred from other prisons after killing inmates or prison staff.

They include Richard Reid, the attempted shoe bomber; Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th 9/11 hijacker; and al-Qaeda terrorists behind the bombing of the World Trade Centre in 1993 and the bombing of the US embassies in Africa.

The prison was built after the murder of two prison officers at a high security prison in Marion, Illinois.

The perimeter of the 35-acre site is guarded by 12ft high razor wire fences, laser-beams, pressure pads and attack dogs.

Inmates are kept in cells measuring 7ft by 12ft for 23 hours a day. The bed, desk and stool are immovable and cast from poured concrete. The cells also feature shower cubicals and a toilet.

Wardens have previously told the European Convention on Human Rights that daily exercise is taken in pens measuring 12ft by 20ft, containing pull-up bars and footballs.

Prisoners are allowed to talk to each other between pens, or through the ventilation grills in their cells.

A former British military intelligence officer told the Daily Mirror: ‘Justice in the States for Kotey and El-Sheikh will not be about rehabilitation, but serious punishment and revenge.

‘Theirs will be a life of aching drudgery and boredom. The supermax strips away any comfort and distraction. It will be their worst nightmare.

‘In many ways being locked up for the rest of your life in a featureless and excruciatingly monotonous place is for some people a fate worse than the death penalty.’

Kotey and El-Sheikh, who were raised in the UK but have been stripped of their British citizenship, were captured by the Syrian Democratic Forces in January 2018.

They are accused of being complicit in the murders of 27 people, including the British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning and four Americans.

Other members of the ISIS cell are said to include Mohammed Emwazi, the group’s ringleader, also known as Jihadi John, who was killed in a US air strike in 2015, while Aine Davis is in jail in Turkey for terror offences.

Emwazi appeared in a number of videos in which hostages, including British aid workers Mr Haines and Mr Henning and US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, were killed.

A spokesman for the Supreme Court told MailOnline today: ‘This morning the Supreme Court issued the final order in the case of Elgizouli (Appellant) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Respondent).

‘The order records and gives effect to the Court’s decision in its judgment that the SSHDs decision was unlawful under Part 3 of the Data Protection Act 2018.

‘The Divisional Court had ordered that ‘the Secretary of State will provide no further material to the US Government pursuant to any request for Mutual Legal Assistance’ and that order was to stay in force until the appeal to the UKSC was determined. That has now happened.

‘The order concludes the proceedings in the Supreme Court, which means that the stay (the stop) on providing material to the US Government is removed.’

At the time it was savaged over the ruling by barrister Jon Holbrook, who said the boundaries between politics and law had been erased.

He said: ‘The judgment from the Supreme Court is shocking. Seven judges have waded into a political issue of the most sensitive kind.

‘Fettering the prosecution of extremists who may be responsible for the most heinous, repulsive and barbaric of crimes is a surefire way of turning the people against the law.’

Source: Daily Mail