AG Lord Hermer KC and the terrorist

The good guys and the bad guys.

One of the clients that the now Attorney - General Lord Hermer KC choose to represent was the mother of one of those ISIS Beatles, El Shafee Elsheikh. He was guilty of being part of an ISIS torture and hostage cell. Hostages recall the group (known as the Beatles) torturing journalists and aid workers with electric shocks, waterboarding and mock executions.

Lord Hermer KC choose to represent the mother Maha Elgizouli of El Shafee Elsheikh. Although she tried to stop the radicalisation of her son he ended up being a Jihadi loving, beheading terrorist.

When El Shafee Elsheikh was finally captured and ended up in the US for trial his mother was concerned that the British government might send evidence over to the US for that trial which may have resulted in the death penalty for him. So she challenged this.

Lord Hermer KC, our current Attorney - General, decided to represent Maha Elgizouli, mother of ISIS Beatle El Shafee Elsheikh. There were also a few other human right lawyers there – all very worried that this guy might end up having his ‘fundamental human rights’ infringed in the US.

In the end the Supreme Court in the UK agreed with Lord Hermer KC. The UK government should not have aided the US government by supplying evidence to them that may result in the death penalty being administered against El Shafee Elsheikh.

This is how Lord Hermer KC put it when he was named lawyer of the week in the Times. What were the main issues in the case? Lord Hermer KC, “whether data protection legislation permitted the UK to send evidence to the US for use in criminal proceedings, where to do so would expose individuals to the risk of the death sentence and thereby breach fundamental human rights. The core issue was whether the rule of law extends even to those accused of the most repugnant acts. Spoiler alert: it does.”

Elsheikh was convicted in 2002 for his ‘repugnant acts’ in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia and sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole. Lord Hermer KC can sleep soundly at night knowing this guy will not be executed.

A quick recap on El Shafee Elsheikh, the person whose cause Lord Hermer KC decided to lend his considerable intellect to in helping.

Elsheikh’s parents, Rashid Sidahmed Elsheikh and Maha Elgizouli, escaped Sudan’s civil war in 1993 and moved to the White City district of London’s Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. Their son El Shafee Elsheikh was educated in Britain and had British citizenship (later stripped by the Tory government.) He went on to study mechanical engineering at Acton College in London.

Elsheikh became involved in gang violence. He then married an Ethiopian woman in Canada but could not bring her to the UK. This made him angry with the UK authorities and he was radicalised by ISIS. This is clearly a proportionate response to your wife being denied entry to the UK. Elsheikh joined al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria and then later joined ISIS.

In ISIS, Elsheikh joined with other men Mohammed Emwazi, Alexanda Kotey, and Aine Davis to form the terror cell labelled The Beatles by hostages because of their British accents. That’s the thanks they gave the country that educated them. That cell was a torture and hostage cell. Hostages recall the group torturing with electric shocks, waterboarding and mock executions.

Elsheikh's convictions revolved around the deaths of four American hostages: James Foley, Steven Sotloff, Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller. He was found guilty on eight charges of hostage-taking, conspiracy to murder U.S. citizens and supporting a foreign terrorist organization.

The US Attorney’s Office summary of the trial said “according to court documents.. former British citizen El Shafee Elsheikh, 34, served as a leader in a wide-ranging conspiracy involving the captivity of 26 hostages in Syria. Elsheikh personally participated in the detention of and hostage negotiations for four American citizens – James Wright Foley, Kayla Jean Mueller, Steven Joel Sotloff, and Peter Edward Kassig – each of whom died as hostages in ISIS custody. In addition, Elsheikh personally participated in the detention of and hostage negotiations for British, French, Italian, Danish, German, Spanish, Swedish, Belgian, Swiss, and New Zealand nationals.”

Photo by Nahid Hatami on Unsplash

The UK Supreme Court said in the case Lord Hermer KC represented the mother of Elsheikh that there was “no doubt as to the monstrous nature of the crimes.” Just how monstrous?

“According to evidence presented during trial, in addition to physically and psychologically abusing the hostages, Elsheikh and his co-conspirators participated in forcibly exposing the hostages to the murder of other hostages held by ISIS, including a Russian hostage ..and a Syrian prisoner... After a group of European hostages were forced to witness the execution of the Syrian prisoner, Elsheikh and his co-conspirators returned the hostages to the prison where they were being held with American and British hostages.”

In the trial of Elsheikh in the US journalist Nicolas Hénin gave evidence that the ISIS group used sadistic and terrifying tactics against the hostages. The torture he witnessed and carried out was brutal. Mr Hénin said that he saw Mr Haines, who was starved and tortured so much that he “at first sight looked like somebody at a Nazi concentration camp” and Mr Foley, who was weak from "intense torture" and had had his ribs broken.

Another captive, the Danish journalist Daniel Rye Ottosen, was "a shadow of a man... so badly tortured that he was mentally and physically diminished.” Wounds on his wrists were “so deep you could see his bones” Mr Hénin said.

You remember James Foley? He was the journalist captured, tortured and beheaded by ISIS of which El Shafee Elsheikh was convicted. After his death was confirmed, his mother, Diane Foley, said: "We have never been prouder of our son Jim, he gave his life trying to expose the world to the suffering of the Syrian people.” Lord have mercy.

Steven Sotloff was also a journalist and the grandson of Holocaust survivors. He earned the reputation as the Voice for the Voiceless for his work. He was beheaded after James Foley. Lord have mercy.

Peter Kassig was an US Army Ranger and then became an aid worker after receiving a medical discharge having served in Iraq. In 2013, as he was on his way to Deir Ezzour in eastern Syria to deliver food and medical supplies to refugees, Kassig was taken captive by ISIL. His family begged his captors for mercy. He was beheaded. ISIL posted a video showing ‘Jihadi John’ standing over a severed human head that was later identified as that of Peter Kassig. Lord have mercy.

Kayla Jean Mueller was the fourth hostage that El Shafee Elsheikh was directly involved with murdering. She was shown no mercy. Her family described her as a woman who devoted her life to helping others. After graduating, she lived and worked with humanitarian aid groups in northern India, Israel and the Palestinian territories. In 2012 she decided to travel to the Turkey-Syria border to work for the Danish Refugee Council and Support to Life. She visited refugee camps and played and painted with Syrian children. In August 2013, while leaving a hospital run by MSF (Doctors without Borders) she was kidnapped by militants from Islamic State.

As well being held captive she was repeatedly raped by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. At the trial of El Shafee Elsheikh, Ms Mueller's mother described exchanging several emails with the IS captors, in which she begged for her daughter’s life. She was murdered and her body has never been recovered. Lord have mercy.

There are some people out there who help the good guys. And there are some people out there who help the bad guys.

And those who help the good guys? Spoiler alert: It’s not Attorney - General Lord Hermer KC.