President Barack Obama yesterday confirmed the death of American aid worker Peter Kassig, a former army ranger who disappeared over a year ago at a checkpoint in northeastern Syria while delivering medical supplies.
The president’s statement came hours after the Islamic State released a video showing a black-clad executioner standing over the severed head of a man it identified as Mr Kassig.
Mr Kassig “was taken from us in an act of pure evil by a terrorist group,” Mr Obama said.
In recent days, American intelligence agencies received strong indications that the Islamic State had killed Mr Kassig. The president’s announcement was the first official confirmation of his death.
“Today we offer our prayers and condolences to the parents and family of Abdul-Rahman Kassig, also known to us as Peter,” Mr Obama’s statement said. The president used the Muslim name Mr Kassig had adopted, making the point that the Islamic State had killed one of its own. He acknowledged the “anguish at this painful time” felt by Mr Kassig’s family.
The video footage circulated by the Islamic State, the violent jihadist group also known as Isis or Isil, was significantly different from the execution videos of four other western hostages, whose televised deaths were carefully choreographed.Those videos were shot with several cameras from different vantage points to give the appearance of a professional production. By contrast, the footage of Mr Kassig’s death is shot with a single camera and appears amateurish, with harsh lighting obscuring the executioners’ visage.
While in the earlier videos the hostages are seen kneeling in orange jumpsuits and are forced to make speeches before the executioner lifts the knife to their throats, in the one released yesterday, the moments leading up to Mr Kassig’s death are not shown. The change in format – combined with the lower production quality of the clip – may suggest that the Islamic State is on the run and unable to pull off the same cinematic production as before.
The camera pans across the boots of the hooded killer. “This is Peter Edward Kassig, a US citizen of your country. Peter, who fought against the Muslims in Iraq while serving as a soldier under the American army doesn’t have much to say. His previous cellmates have already spoken on his behalf,” says the fighter who speaks with a British accent, appeared in the previous beheading videos and has been nicknamed Jihadi John by British media.
An Indianapolis native, Mr Kassig turned to humanitarian work after a tour in Iraq in 2007, where he served as an army ranger. He was certified as an emergency medical technician, and in 2012, he returned to the battlefield – this time helping the wounded in Tripoli, Lebanon. Later that year he moved to Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, where he founded a small aid group and initially used his savings to buy supplies, which he distributed to the Syrian refugees who were flooding into Lebanon.
In 2013, he relocated to Gaziantep, a city in southern Turkey roughly one hour from the Syrian border, and began making regular trips into Syria to offer medical care to the wounded.
– (New York Times)