Italian aid worker describes 14 months of torture and abuse at the hands of ISIS Beatle

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An Italian aid worker who survived 14 months of captivity in Syria has testified about the sickening abuse he suffered at the hands of the so-called ‘ISIS Beatles’, a group of four British jihadists who specialized in torture at the height of the Islamic State’s power.  

Federico Motka testified on Thursday at the US federal trial of El Shafee Elsheikh, 33, the accused member of the ‘Beatles’ cell now facing justice in an American court in Virginia.

Motka testified that his captors called him a ‘posh w**ker’ for attending English boarding school, forced him to participate in a ‘Royal Rumble’ fight with other hostages, and subjected them to a ‘regime of punishments and stress positions’ until his release in May 2014.   

Elsheikh is a British national charged with taking a leading role in the Islamic State kidnapping scheme that took more than 20 Westerners hostage between 2012 and 2015. 

Four Americans – journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller – were among them. Foley, Sotloff and Kassig were decapitated. Mueller was forced into slavery and raped repeatedly by the Islamic State´s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, before she too was killed.

Motka is the first surviving hostage to testify at Elsheikh’s trial in Alexandria, Virginia, which entered its second day on Thursday, when he described 14 months of brutality at the hands of the Islamic State. 

The aid worker testified that his abductors greeted him in English after he and his colleagues were kidnapped near a refugee camp on the Turkish border, saying: ‘Welcome to Syria, you mutt.’

Born in Trieste, Italy, Motka said he spent much of his childhood in the Middle East and went to boarding school in England. 

He was an aid worker surveying the needs of refugee camps in March 2013 when he and a colleague, Briton David Haines, were captured and taken hostage. 

Motka testified that for the first month of captivity, he was only only occasionally mistreated, but that mistreatment frequently came at the hands of three captors hostages dubbed ‘the Beatles’ because of their British accents. 

They learned to speak surreptitiously about their captors, who wore mask and took pains to conceal their identity, since they never knew what would set them off. 

A dispute over bathroom hygiene prompted a particularly intense beating, he said.

‘They said I was a posh w**ker because I went to boarding school,’ Motka testified. ‘They said I was arrogant, and they were going to take me down a peg.’

Motka’s use of the term ‘posh w**ker’ set off a brief period of uncomfortable laughter and confusion in the courtroom.

The judge, confused, asked him to explain the meaning of ‘posh banker’, forcing the aid worker to clarify the British vulgarity ‘w**ker’, which is uncommon in America. 

Motka explained that the phrase implies someone is ‘a bit of a d**k’.  

The British accents and phraseology are a key element of the case, though, as prosecutors seek to prove that Elsheikh is indeed one of the Beatles who tortured hostages, even though the Beatles took great pains to conceal their faces. 

Motka testified that there were at least three Britons in the group of captors, and the hostages nicknamed them ‘John,’ ‘George’ and ‘Ringo.’

Life became far worse about a month into his captivity when he was blamed for a Syrian captive’s efforts to escape from an adjacent cell. 

He was beaten that night with a rubber cable for an hour, and transferred to a facility the hostages dubbed ‘the box.’ He was warned before the transfer: ‘You don’t know punishment yet.’

He said he and other hostages at the box then endured a lengthy ‘regime of punishment’ that included regular beatings and forced stress positions. ‘George,’ another man named Abu Mohamed and a third nicknamed ‘the punisher’ regularly tortured them, Motka said.

‘They played lots of games with us,’ Motka said, maintaining composure as he clearly struggled with the emotions of describing his captivity. ‘They gave us dog names. We needed to come and immediately respond’ to the dog name to avoid a beating.

Motka described in chilling detail how his captors made him and three other prisoners do a ‘Royal Rumble’ style fight for their enjoyment – while the terrorists made sportscaster style commentary. 

Motka said it happened in the prison he dubbed ‘The Box’ with other prisoners John Cantlie, a Brit, James Foley, an American, and David Haines, another Brit.

Motka said: ‘They called it the Royal Rumble’, referring to the annual wrestling event produced by US wrestling body WWE.

He continued: ‘They were so excited, it was the event of the day. They ordered us to get into a tag team style boxing match.

‘James and John were against me and David. If you were too tired you had to tag yourself out’.

Motka said that all of them were so tired and weak they were ‘barely able to lift our arms’ but they were still forced to fight for an hour.

He said: ‘James passed out, John passed out. David nearly passed out. Whoever they deemed to have lost the fight would be waterboarded’.

Prosecutor Dennis Fitzpatrick asked if The Beatles did a ‘play by play’ commentary of the fight. Motka said: ‘The did a Radio 5 Live commentary’, referring to the BBC’s sports radio station

The Beatles decided that Cantile was the winner and that Motka had lost, but he was not waterboarded and it seemed like just a threat – but he suffered the torture on other occasions.

Motka said that the abuse at the hands of The Beatles ranged from the ‘ridiculously childish’ like nipple twisting up to waterboarding.

He said that Elsheikh and the Beatle called John used to ‘egg each other on’.

He said: ‘It was like school kids bullying someone’.

Describing waterboarding at the hands of Elsheikh and George, Motka said he was forced to lie on his back over the toilet with a jumper on his face while water was poured on top of it.

He said: ‘You start to panic a little bit. I was trying to breathe out the side of my mouth. Once the jumper absorbs the water you start to lose oxygen…water starts to get into your lungs and you start to choke’.

At that point George would always stop the process and say: ‘That’s enough’. 

Motka said that it felt ‘terrible’ and was the ‘worst thing that could happen up until that point’.

According to Motka, the prisoners were made to wear orange jumpsuits with numbers on the back because George wanted them to experience what it was like for prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, the US prison in Cuba where post-9/11 terror suspects were held.

Motka said that George ‘always spoke about Guantanamo’ and that the horrific beatings and mistreatment were ‘his idea of what conditions in Guantanamo were like’.

Motka said that they were barely given any food and if they were it was usually just bread and olives – he and Haines lost dozens of pounds in weight.

One of the few times they were allowed to shower, Motka saw blue bruises all over the muscular part of Haines’ body from the beatings.

Other times they were not allowed to go to the toilet, which became problematic when they were moved to another prison and were given more food but couldn’t keep it inside because they had been so badly mistreated.

Motka was not released until May 25, 2014. His 14 months in captivity were the longest of any hostage in the group.

Prosecutors have said in court that Elshiekh is the one who was nicknamed Ringo. Other accounts have alleged that he was the one known as George.

Defense lawyers, though, have highlighted the difficulties that hostages have in formally identifying each of their captors, who routinely wore masks that covered all but their eyes.

In opening statements, prosecutors referenced only three British nationals – Elsheikh, his longtime friend Alexenda Kotey, and Mohammed Emwazi, who frequently carried out the role of executioner and was known as ‘Jihadi John.’

Emwazi was killed in a drone strike, and Kotey was captured alongside Elsheikh and also brought to Virginia to face trial. Kotey pleaded guilty last year in a plea bargain that calls for a life sentence.

Jurors also heard testimony Thursday from Danish hostage negotiator Jens Serup, who testified about prolonged efforts to secure the release of Daniel Rye Ottosen in exchange for 2 million euros.

The jury saw photos of huge bruises on Ottosen’s arm and back after he was finally released. Serup testified that the captors told Ottosen the beating was a ‘farewell present not to forget them.’  

Elsheikh, 33, is accused of being involved in the murders of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and relief workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller.

Elsheikh, who is also charged with lethal-hostage taking, is believed to be one of four British ISIS terrorists belonging to the ‘Beatles’ cell – nicknamed for their UK roots and accents – that operated in Iraq and Syria.

He played a leadership role in keeping at least 27 Western hostages captive between 2012 and 2015 whilst inflicting torture on his victims using brutal methods such as waterboarding, prosecutors told the court in Alexandria on Wednesday.  

Prosecutor John Gibbs said Elsheikh was known by his captives not only for his British accent, but for his unusual penchant for brutality even within a terrorist group known for its cruelty.  

As the victims’ families stared down Elsheikh in the courtroom, Gibbs described the ISIS propaganda videos showing Foley, Sotloff and Kassig being beheaded, and how Mueller was forced into slavery and raped repeatedly by the ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi before being killed. 

Throughout opening statements of the trial, which is expected to last at least three weeks, Elsheikh sat stiff, avoiding eye contact with the jury while Gibbs described the atrocities inflicted on hostages. 

When Elsheikh and the other militants learned that a European hostage was marking his twenty-fifth birthday, they ensured they inflicted exactly 25 blows, Gibbs said. 

Only two accused members of the four-man cell, Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey, are being prosecuted in the US. 

Kotey pleaded guilty last year to federal charges of hostage-taking resulting in death and providing material support to terrorists, and faces life in prison. 

His sentencing, originally scheduled for March 4, has been delayed until April 29, spurring speculation that he could be cooperating against Elsheikh.

The third member of the cell, Mohammed Emwazi, a British citizen who oversaw the executions known as ‘Jihadi John’, died in a drone strike in 2015. 

Aine Lesley Davis, the fourth member of the group, was convicted in Turkey on terrorism charges and jailed. 

The families of the four US victims attended the trial on Wednesday, with Foley’s parents Diane and John as well as Kassig’s parents Paula and Ed pictured arriving at the courtroom.   

But for Mueller’s mother Marsha the emotion was too much and she wiped a tear from her eye as Elsheikh walked into court – before her husband Carl put his arm around her to comfort her.

Bethany Haines, the daughter of David Haines – a British aid worker kidnapped and beheaded by the ISIS ‘Beatles’ cell – also arrived at the courtroom in Virginia, as she said she wanted to come face-to-face with the man accused of kidnapping and torturing her father.   

While Elsheikh, who was stripped of his British citizenship, has not been charged in America over Mr Haines’ death due to America lacking jurisdiction, Haines wanted to have some sense of closure by attending the US trial.  

Elsheikh and Kotey are accused of inflicting electric shocks with a taser, forcing hostages to fight each other, 20-minute beatings with sticks and waterboarding. 

Surviving hostages will testify that Elsheikh and Kotey were more likely than regular day-to-day guards to hand out beatings, Gibbs said. 

The hostages ‘all experienced brutal mistreatment at the hands of the British men they called the Beatles,’ prosecutor John Gibbs said Wednesday as part of his opening statement.

He said Elsheikh, who was known as both ‘Ringo’ and ‘George’, had ‘knowingly conspired’ to take Westerners hostage. 

The ISIS militants ‘were utterly terrifying’ to the hostages, Gibbs said. The physical abuse they dished out was ‘unrelenting and unpredictable’ and they ‘seemed to get satisfaction from physically abusing the hostages’. 

If the Britons came into contact with hostages, they were supposed to kneel down, face the wall and avoid eye contact at all times.  

‘If a hostage looked at any of the three men, they would be beaten,’ Gibbs said. ‘In fact, they did not have to do anything to be beaten.’

Even hostages about to be released after paying a ransom were given ‘going-away beatings’ by the British men, Gibbs said.  

Among specific murders the prosecution alleges Kotey and Elsheikh were involved in was that of Mueller, who was seized and detained by Islamic State militants in August 2013. 

The indictment says that beginning about October 2014, Mueller was sexually abused by the late Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi while held captive in Syria.

Mueller’s family received an email from Islamic State fighters in February 2014, confirming her death in Syria, the indictment says.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said Islamic State is still trying to radicalize people in the United States and elsewhere.

‘Their goal is to motivate people to launch attacks against Western targets wherever they are, using any means available,’ Wray said.

Wray and Demers said the support of the British government was critical to moving the investigation and prosecution forward.

The families of Foley, Kassig, Mueller and Sotloff welcomed the news.

‘James, Peter, Kayla and Steven were kidnapped, tortured, beaten, starved, and murdered by members of the Islamic State in Syria,’ they said in a joint statement.

‘Now our families can pursue accountability for these crimes against our children in a US court.’ 

Spanish journalist Javier Espinosa, who was kidnapped by the ISIS cell and spent three months as a hostage, said Elsheikh – whom he dubbed ‘Jihadi George’ – was the ‘most brutal’ of the terrorists. 

‘George was the most crazy one,’ the El Mundo journalist said of his former captor Elsheikh.

Espinosa said whilst it was another Beatles member, Mohamed Emwazi, who carried out the executions of prisoners, he was ‘just muscles’ and Elsheikh was ‘the one who was leading the others’. 

Interestingly, the prosecutor referred only to three British nationals — Elsheikh, Alexanda Kotey, and Mohammed Emwazi, who frequently carried out the role of executioner and was known as ‘Jihadi John’.

Together, the men were nicknamed ‘The Beatles’ by their captives, in part because of their accents and in part because the hostages felt the need to be surreptitious when talking amongst themselves because they risked punishment to be openly discussing their captors, Gibbs said.

Among them, Elsheikh was known specifically as ‘Ringo’, Gibbs said.

Usually, public discussion has centered on four captors known as ‘the Beatles.’ The fourth, Aine Davis, is serving a prison sentence in Turkey.

Emwazi was killed in a drone strike, and Kotey was captured alongside Elsheikh and also brought to Virginia to face trial. Kotey pleaded guilty last year in a plea bargain that calls for a life sentence.

Defense attorney Edward MacMahon highlighted the discrepancy about the number of Beatles as he argued for his client’s innocence, saying Elsheikh was not a ‘Beatle’ but a simple Islamic State foot soldier.  

MacMahon said there was ‘no dispute’ about the horror of the captives’ fate. But, he said, while there was ‘no doubt’ that Elsheikh had gone to Syria and fought with IS, there also was no evidence he was one of the ‘Beatles.’

MacMahon said surviving hostages have different recollections about each of the Beatles and their characteristics, and about whether there were three or four. 

He noted that the British speakers were careful to always wear masks, making identification difficult.    

‘The former hostages will give you different versions of whom the Beatles were, you will hear very, very different stories,’ he said, arguing that the evidence ‘will fail to prove’ that Elsheikh was involved.

MacMahon also said Elsheikh’s numerous admissions in media interviews about his role in the hostage-taking scheme should be disregarded.

They were made while he was in custody of the Syrian Democratic Forces, and he was fearful of being transferred to Iraq, where he heard rumors that detainees were being summarily executed after 10-minute trials, the attorney said.

Admitting that he was a ‘Beatle’ was a way to ensure transfer into Western custody, MacMahon said.

Diane Foley, James Foley’s mother, attended the trial on Wednesday and said it was important to her that the judicial process be carried out.

‘I think we must do the opposite of what was done. That to me is the huge contrast,’ she said, referring to the treatment of her son and the other hostages.

She said she was ‘surprised’ by the defense’s opening statement. 

A former Danish soldier later took the witness stand to tell how he had negotiated for months to secure the release of a Danish photographer, Daniel Rye Ottosen.

He read emails to the young man’s family demanding ever higher ransoms.

‘You are negotiating for the life of your only son and time is a factor,’ they wrote to the parents, accompanying their words with photos or videos of executed hostages. 

In pretrial arguments, defense lawyers sought unsuccessfully to have Elsheikh’s confessions to interrogators and journalists tossed out, saying they were made under duress. 

The judge said the evidence was overwhelming that Elsheikh’s confessions were given freely.

Gibbs told jurors that they will hear from numerous witnesses who will provide evidence of Elsheikh’s guilt, including from captives who spent time with the slain Americans as well as family members who received ransom demands.

The first witness to testify was terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman, a professor at Georgetown University, who walked the jury through the origins of the Islamic State group as an offshoot of al-Qaeda.

Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey, were captured in January 2018 by Kurdish forces in Syria while trying to escape to Turkey. 

They were turned over to US forces in Iraq and flown to Virginia, US, in October 2020 to face charges of hostage-taking, conspiracy to murder US citizens and supporting a foreign terrorist organization.

Ringleader Mohammed Emwazi, a British citizen who oversaw the executions known as ‘Jihadi John’, died in a drone strike in 2015. 

Aine Lesley Davis, the fourth member of the group, was convicted in Turkey on terrorism charges and jailed. 

Kotey pleaded guilty in September 2021 and is facing life in prison.

Under his plea agreement, Kotey will serve 15 years in jail in the US and then be extradited to Britain to face further charges.

The charges against Elsheikh carry a potential death sentence, but U.S. prosecutors have advised British officials that they will not seek the death penalty against Elsheikh or Kotey. 

He faces an unconditional sentence of life imprisonment.