Focus on Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia displays beheaded Yemenis in public

http://www.albawaba.com/news/saudi-arabia-execution-beheading-493443

Saudi Arabia on Tuesday beheaded five Yemenis and displayed their bodies in public for killing a national and forming a gang that committed robberies across several towns in the kingdom, the interior ministry said.

The five were executed in the southwestern town of Jizan, bringing the number of people executed in the kingdom this year to 46, according to an AFP tally.

A witness in Jizan told AFP that the five men were displayed in public near a university.

In a picture on Twitter, five men are seen hanging from a rope tied to their waists on a horizontal bar between two cranes.

The ministry said that Khaled, Adel and Qassem Saraa as well as Saif Ali al-Sahari and Khaled Showie al-Sahari had formed a gang which committed "several crimes in various regions in the kingdom and robbed stores."

The five had killed Ahmed Haroubi, a Saudi, by beating him up and strangling him, it said.

In March, a Saudi firing squad executed in public seven men convicted of armed robbery despite last-minute appeals by rights groups at the time that their lives be spared.

In 2012, the kingdom executed 76 people, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. The US-based Human Rights Watch put the number at 69.

In March of this year, seven men convicted of armed robbery were executed in Saudi Arabia despite last-minute appeals by rights groups that their lives be spared.

The condemned men were similarly convicted of "forming a gang that carried out several armed robberies and thefts with the help of other people," the ministry said in a statement published by the official SPA news agency.

Saudi's authorities have frequently been criticized by rights groups for the rate of executions and for perceived lack of fair trials of those condemned.

Reports by Amnesty International document a policy of forced confessions by Saudi authorities through the use of torture, intimidation and coercion.

Haraba, a form of Islamic punishment used against thieves and charlatans, involves crucifixion.

Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery, drug trafficking, sorcery and witchcraft are all punishable by death under Saudi Arabia's strict version of sharia, or Islamic law.

U.S. State Department “Welcomes” News That Saudi Arabia Will Head U.N. Human Rights Panel

Glenn Greenwald

The Intercept,

24 September, 2015

Last week’s announcement that Saudi Arabia — easily one of the world’smost brutally repressive regimes — was chosen to head a U.N. Human Rights Council panel provoked indignation around the world. That reaction was triggered for obvious reasons. Not only has Saudi Arabia executed more than 100 people already this year, mostly by beheading (a rate of 1 execution every two days), and not only is it serially flogging dissidents, but it is reaching new levels of tyrannical depravity as it is about to behead and then crucify the 21-year-old son of a prominent regime critic, Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, who was convicted at the age of 17 of engaging in demonstrations against the government.

Most of the world may be horrified at the selection of Saudi Arabia to head a key U.N. human rights panel, but the U.S. State Department most certainly is not. Quite the contrary: its officials seem quite pleased about the news. At a State Department briefing yesterday afternoon, Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner was questioned by the invaluable Matt Lee of AP, and this is the exchange that resulted:

QUESTION: Change topic? Saudi Arabia.

MR. TONER: Saudi Arabia.

QUESTION: Yesterday, Saudi Arabia was named to head the Human Rights Council, and today I think they announced they are about to behead a 21-year-old Shia activist named Muhammed al-Nimr. Are you aware of that?

MR. TONER: I’m not aware of the trial that you — or the verdict — death sentence.

QUESTION: Well, apparently, he was arrested when was 17 years old and kept in juvenile detention, then moved on. And now, he’s been scheduled to be executed.

MR. TONER: Right. I mean, we’ve talked about our concerns about some of the capital punishment cases in Saudi Arabia in our Human Rights Report, but I don’t have any more to add to it.

QUESTION: So you —

QUESTION: Well, how about a reaction to them heading the council?

MR. TONER: Again, I don’t have any comment, don’t have any reaction to it. I mean, frankly, it’s — we would welcome it. We’re close allies. If we —

QUESTION: Do you think that they’re an appropriate choice given — I mean, how many pages is — does Saudi Arabia get in the Human Rights Report annually?

MR. TONER: I can’t give that off the top of my head, Matt.

QUESTION: I can’t either, but let’s just say that there’s a lot to write about Saudi Arabia and human rights in that report. I’m just wondering if you — that it’s appropriate for them to have a leadership position.

MR. TONER: We have a strong dialogue, obviously a partnership with Saudi Arabia that spans, obviously, many issues. We talk about human rights concerns with them. As to this leadership role, we hope that it’s an occasion for them to look at human rights around the world but also within their own borders.

QUESTION: But you said that you welcome them in this position. Is it based on [an] improved record? I mean, can you show or point to anything where there is a sort of stark improvement in their human rights record?

MR. TONER: I mean, we have an ongoing discussion with them about all these human rights issues, like we do with every country. We make our concerns clear when we do have concerns, but that dialogue continues. But I don’t have anything to point to in terms of progress.

QUESTION: Would you welcome as a — would you welcome a decision to commute the sentence of this young man?

MR. TONER: Again, I’m not aware of the case, so it’s hard for me to comment on it other than that we believe that any kind of verdict like that should come at the end of a legal process that is just and in accordance with international legal standards.

QUESTION: Change of subject?

MR. TONER: Sure.

That’s about as clear as it gets. The U.S. government “welcomes” the appointment of Saudi Arabia to a leadership position on this Human Rights panel because it’s a “close ally.” As I documented two weeks ago courtesy of an equally candid admission from an anonymous “senior U.S. official”: “The U.S. loves human-rights-abusing regimes and always has, provided they ‘cooperate.’ … The only time the U.S. government pretends to care in the slightest about human rights abuses is when they’re carried out by ‘countries that don’t cooperate.'”

It’s difficult to know whether Mark Toner is lying when he claims ignorance about the case of al-Nimr, the regime critic about to be beheaded and crucified for dissident activism, which he engaged in as a teen. Indeed, it’s hard to know which would be worse: active lying or actual ignorance, given that much of the world has been talking about this case. The government of France formally requested that the Saudis rescind the death penalty. Is it really possible that the deputy spokesperson of the U.S. State Department is ignorant of this controversy? Either way, the reluctance of the U.S. government to utter a peep about the grotesque abuses of its “close ally” is in itself уgrotesque.

But it’s also profoundly revealing. The close U.S./Saudi alliance and the massive amount of weapons and intelligence lavished on the regime in Riyadh by the West is one of the great unmentionables in Western discourse. (The Guardian last week published an editorial oh-so-earnestly lamenting the war in Yemen being waged by what it called the “Saudi-led coalition,” yet never once mentioned the rather important fact that the Saudis are being armed in this heinous war by the U.S. and U.K.; it took a letter to the editor from an Oxfam official to tell The Guardian that the West is not being “complacent” about the war crimes being committed in Yemen, as The Guardian misleadingly claimed, but rather actively complicit.)

It’s not hard to understand why so many of the elite sectors of the West want everyone to avert their eyes from this deep and close relationship with the Saudis. It’s because that alliance single-handedly destroys almost every propagandistic narrative told to the Western public about that region.

As the always-expanding “War on Terror” enters its 14th year, the ostensible target — radical, violent versions of Islam — is fueled far more by the U.S.’s closest allies than any of the countries the U.S. has been fighting under the “War on Terror” banner. Beyond that, the alliance proves the complete absurdity of believing that the U.S. and U.K.’s foreign policies, let alone their various wars, have anything to do with protecting human rights or subverting tyranny and fanaticism. And it renders a complete laughingstock any attempts to depict the U.S. government as some sort of crusader for freedom and democracy or whatever other pretty goals are regularly attributed to it by its helpful press.

The evil empire of Saudi Arabia is the West’s real enemy

Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain: planners to financiers, cadres to foot soldiers, ideologists to cheerleaders

The Independent,

27 September, 2015

Iran is seriously mistrusted by Israel and America. North Korea protects its nuclear secrets and is ruled by an erratic, vicious man. Vladimir Putin’s territorial ambitions alarm democratic nations. The newest peril, Isis, the wild child of Islamists, has shocked the whole world. But top of this list should be Saudi Arabia – degenerate, malignant, pitiless, powerful and as dangerous as any of those listed above.

The state systematically transmits its sick form of Islam across the globe, instigates and funds hatreds, while crushing human freedoms and aspiration. But the West genuflects to its rulers. Last week Saudi Arabia was appointed chair of the UN Human Rights Council, a choice welcomed by Washington. Mark Toner, a spokesperson for the State Department, said: “We talk about human rights concerns with them. As to this leadership role, we hope that it is an occasion for them to look into human rights around the world and also within their own borders.”

The jaw simply drops. Saudi Arabia executes one person every two days. Ali Mohammed al-Nimr is soon to be beheaded then crucified for taking part in pro-democracy protests during the Arab Spring. He was a teenager then. Raif Badawi, a blogger who dared to call for democracy, was sentenced to 10 years and 1,000 lashes. Last week, 769 faithful Muslim believers were killed in Mecca where they had gone on the Hajj. Initially, the rulers said it was “God’s will” and then they blamed the dead. Mecca was once a place of simplicity and spirituality. Today the avaricious Saudis have bulldozed historical sites and turned it into the Las Vegas of Islam – with hotels, skyscrapers and malls to spend, spend, spend. The poor can no longer afford to go there. Numbers should be controlled to ensure safety – but that would be ruinous for profits. Ziauddin Sardar’s poignant book Mecca: The Sacred City, describes the desecration of Islam’s holiest site.

Even more seriously, the pernicious Saudi influence is spreading fast and freely. King Salman has offered to build 200 mosques in Germany for recently arrived refugees, many of whom are Muslims. He offered no money for resettlement or basic needs, but Wahhabi mosques, the Trojan horses of the secret Saudi crusade. Several Islamic schools are also sites of Wahhabism, now a global brand. It makes hearts and minds small and suspicious, turns Muslim against Muslim, and undermines modernists.

The late Laurent Murawiec, a French neocon, wrote this in 2002: “The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadres to foot soldiers, from ideologists to cheerleaders.” Murawiec’s politics were odious, but his observations were spot on. Remember that most of the 9/11 killers were Saudi; so was the al-Qaeda hierarchy.

In the 14 years that have followed 9/11, the Saudis have become more aggressive, more determined to win the culture wars. They pour money into Islamist organisations and operations, promote punishing doctrines that subjugate women and children, and damn liberal values and democracy. They are pursuing a cruel bombing campaign in Yemen that has left thousands of civilians dead and many more in dire straits.

So, what does our ruling establishment do to stop the invisible hand of this Satan? Zilch. The Royal Family, successive governments, parliamentarians, a good number of institutions and people with clout collectively suck up to the Saudi ruling clan. I have not seen any incisive TV investigation of this regime. We know it is up to no good, but evidence is suppressed. Some writers have tried to break this conspiracy of obsequiousness. Craig Unger’s book, House of Bush, House of Saud was published in 2004. It established beyond reasonable doubt that Saudi Arabia was the nerve-centre of international terrorism. And that the Bush family was unduly close to the regime. Many of us believed the revelations were even more explosive than those by the journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, who exposed the lies told by Richard Nixon.

This deadly enemy will not be cowed or stopped by Trident. Our leaders know what is going on. So what do they do? They pick on the small people. The Government’s Prevent programme now imposes a duty on educators to watch out for young “radicals” and nip them in the bud. Older dissenters, too. To date, 4,000 young Muslims have been referred for reprogramming. One was three years old. In May, a young Muslim schoolboy talked about “eco-terrorists” and was taken away to be interrogated about whether he supported Isis. Academics, lawyers, doctors and nurses are also expected to become the nation’s spies. Mohammed Umar Farooq, a student at Staffordshire University, was accused last week of being a terrorist because he was reading a book entitled Terrorism Studies in the library.

In the US, 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed was arrested because he took a home-made clock to school. (Richard Dawkins, these days a manic tweet preacher, questioned whether the clock was part of a “hoax” designed to get Mohamed arrested, before backtracking.) The West, it seems, is free only for some. And to be a Muslim is a crime.

Extremism is a serious problem. Westernised, liberal Muslims do try to influence feverish, hostile young Muslim minds, but we are largely powerless. Our leaders will not confront Saudi Arabia, the source of Islamist brainwashing and infection. 

They won’t because of oil and the profits made by arms sales. Political cowards and immoral profiteers are the traitors, the real threat to national security, patriotism and cohesion. How do they answer the charge?

New Zealand not only does not condemn human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia but buys sheep farms in the Saudi desert as a bribe to facilitate free-trade deals.

Meanwhile Saudi Arabia (while supporting ISIS) is America’s leading ally to “restore democracy” to Syria

Execution in Saudi Arabia

Martyn Bradbury

the Daily Blog,

24 September, 2015

Many of you will have seen the horrible news that Saudi Arabia is intending to go ahead with the planned crucifixion and execution of Ali Mohamed al-Nimr who was arrested when he was a child.

Taken from the UN News site, and from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights:

“…Mr. al-Nimr, then a high school student, was arrested in 2012 when he was 17 by the Saudi authorities for his reported participation in ‘Arab Spring’ protests in Qatif, Eastern Province. The Specialized Criminal Court in May 2015 sentenced him to death for joining a criminal group and attacking police officers. He was reportedly subjected to torture and ill treatment by the General Investigation Directorate which forced him to confess the charges against him.

[…] Mr. al-Nimr’s appeal made by his lawyer was heard without prior notification and the proceedings fell short of international standards.

“Mr. al-Nimr did not receive a fair trial and his lawyer was not allowed to properly assist him and was prevented from accessing the case file. International law, accepted as binding by Saudi Arabia, provides that capital punishment may only be imposed following trials that comply with the most stringent requirements of fair trial and due process, or could otherwise be considered an arbitrary execution,” said the [Special Rapporteur] experts.

[…]

Two other individuals are at risk of an imminent execution after being arrested for their participation in Qatif when they were children. “

This is abhorrent.  I call on the New Zealand Government to formally protest.  We should call in the Saudi Consular General and demand that this young man’s life be spared.  He should be allowed access to a free and impartial hearing.

There are moments when it is worth saying something.  This is a moment, Minister McCully.

ISIS/Syria update - 11/17/2014

Over the past three months, 1250 wounded ISIS terrorists were hospitalized in Turkey

Many Turkish physicians and nurses are disgruntled and tired of treating savage Islamist terrorists who are responsible for ultimate brutality and horrible bloodshed in Syria and neighboring Iraq.

AWD News,

15 November, 2014

Jiar Gol, BBC’s Kurdish service correspondent in Turkish Kurdish-populated provinces, reported that the injured high-ranking ISIS commanders escaping the war-ravaging Syria are entering the Turkish territory through the porous Syria-Turkey border and later being admitted into Turkish army’s military hospitals and rehabilitation centers in Gaziantep, Mardin and Adana southern provinces.

Dr. Othman Bayraktar, a well-known neurologist in southern city of Kilis near the border with Syria divulged that the hospitals in which he works, have so far received near to 1200 severely injured terrorists whom have been treated for a long time in heavily guarded hospitals and after a while they return to Syria to resume their barbaric and heinous crimes against the innocent civilian populations. Dr.  Bayraktar further added that many hospital staffs are seriously distressed and “ashamed” of offering medical treatments for criminal and thuggish Islamist fighters.

Turkey, a Muslim member of NATO and a U.S. close ally has importuned the West to prepare groundwork for establishing a buffer-zone stretching along the Turkey –Syria border areas to host and support all sort of Syrian militants.

Earlier, Kurdish officials in Iraqi Kurdistan Autonomous Region had warned about Turkey’s dangerous agendas and   said that Ankara by creating a buffer-zone would eradicate all independent Kurdish political parties to cement its grip over Kurdish-populated northern Syria and Iraq.

ISIS has 200,000-strong force, says Kurdish leader

Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) militants have an army of about 200,000 fighters, over six times larger than previous CIA estimates, a senior Iraqi Kurdish leader has claimed.

RT

17 November, 2014

"I am talking about hundreds of thousands of fighters because they are able to mobilize young Arab men in the territory they have taken," Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of Iraqi Kurdish President Massoud Barzani, told the UK Independent in an exclusive interview.

Controlling roughly one third of Iraq and Syria, Hussein says the 250,000 square kilometer territory has provided IS a 10 to 12 million-large population from which to attract potential fighters.

He said this sizeable force explains how the Islamic State had been able to wage successful campaigns on multiple fronts in Iraq and Syria.

"They are fighting in Kobani," he said. “In Kurdistan last month they were attacking in seven different places as well as in Ramadi [capital of Anbar province west of Baghdad] and Jalawla [an Arab-Kurdish town close to Iranian border]."

‘They will fight to the death’

Hussein believes previous US intelligence estimates, with an upward range of 31,500 militants, may have been referring strictly to a “core” force of fighters. But with a sophisticated propaganda effort, coupled with a strong military and ideological core, IS has developed into a sophisticated fighting force that has caught Western governments off guard.

"We are talking about a state that has a military and ideological basis," said Mr Hussein, "so that means they want everyone to learn how to use a rifle, but they also want everybody to have training in their ideology, in other words brainwashing."

In their blistering 5-month offensive, Islamic State militants have counted suicide bombings, mines, snipers and deployment of captured US armored fighting vehicles among their tactics.

That the Islamic State was able to seize and use tanks, heavy artillery and other US hardware, with such speed following the fall of Mosul on June 10, likely signifies the group has successfully identified and incorporated former Iraqi and Syrian soldiers.

Reuters/Stringer

The militants proved equally adept at using Russian-made equipment appropriated in Syria.

Hussein told the daily his Kurdish Peshmerga fighters are impressed by the militants level of competence, grit and discipline.

"They will fight until death, and are dangerous because they are so well-trained," said Mr Hussein. "For instance, they have the best snipers, but to be a good sniper you need not only training on how to shoot, but discipline in staying put for up to five hours so you can hit your target."

That the war-torn and impoverished region leaves few opportunities for young men, the group’s $400-a-month salary also provides a strong incentive for locals to take up arms.

The Islamic State’s horrific acts show that they are willing to go as far as it takes to win, UK-based Middle East expert Catherine Shakdam told RT.

“They are willing to commit horrific, you know, murders and massacres to achieve their goals, I think, this is...propaganda. And I think that is what they are trying to achieve, they are trying to prove a point and demonstrate that they are willing to go to the other extent, to claim victory over the foreign powers and the region. They are trying to coerce people into joining them out of fear, and the sense of helplessness,”Shakdam said.

‘Pulling Iraq back from the precipice’

Washington’s recognition of the threat IS poses can be explained by a series of recent moves pointing to broader US engagement in the region.

During a surprise visit to Baghdad on Saturday, General Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with Iraqi officials and American troops to assess the situation on the ground.

Dempsey sounded a note of optimism, saying the US military had helped Iraqi and Kurdish forces “pull Iraq back from the precipice,” Reuters, whose journalists accompanied the general on the trip, said.

“And now, I think it's starting to turn. So well done," Dempsey told a group of Marines at the US embassy in Baghdad.

Earlier in the week, Dempsy told congress that an 80,000-strong ground force would be needed to defeat IS. Despite retaking the town of Baiji, which houses the country’s largest refinery, Iraqis have little faith their army is capable of triumphing over IS.

Reuters/Stringer

Last week, US President Barack Obama authorized more than doubling the number of American ground forces in Iraq. Around 1,400 US troops are currently in Iraq, with Obama's signing off up to 3,100 troops.

On Thursday, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel told Congress that American troops might have to assume a new role to expedite the anti-extremist campaign.

Hagel insisted, however, that Americans “will not be engaged in a ground combat mission.”

US security guarantees have given Kurdish fighters much needed breathing space, after the Islamic State routed Peshmerga forces in Iraq and nearly captured the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, Irbil.

The siege of the Syrian city of Kobani, which has become the epicenter of both Kurdish resistance and Washington’s campaign to “degrade and destroy” IS, similarly saw the Kurds on the brink of being crushed before US-led airstrikes turned the tide.

Despite the relative gains, the Kurdistan Regional Government is tasked with defending a 650-mile long front line, which extends across Northern Iraq between Iran and Syria.

While Hussein expressed appreciation for US air support that had allowed the Kurds to hold out, he told the Independent they would need Apache helicopters and heavy weapons such as tanks and artillery to combat the jihadists effectively.

Ramping up CIA involvement, opposition forces

Meanwhile, reports have indicated the US is planning to ramp up support for the moderate Syrian opposition in a bid to both stem the IS tide and bolster less radical forces seeking to overthrow the government of President Bashar Assad.

On Friday, the Washington Post, citing senior US officials, reported the Obama administration is weighing plans to ramp up the CIA’s involvement in arming and training fighters in Syria.

Currently, the CIA is on track to train 5,000 fighters a year, a figure that echoes previous Pentagon aims.

The following day, reports surfaced in the Turkish Daily Hurriyet that the US and Turkey had agreed on plans to train 2,000 members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) on Turkish territory.

The two sides, however, failed to agree on the question of training members of Syria’s Democratic Union Party (PYD), an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Turkey has called a terrorist organization.

Last month, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said “the PYD is equal with the PKK for us.”

Obama confirms death of US hostage Peter Kassig after Isis releases video

Briton thought to have killed four other western hostages shown standing over a severed head

US officials say they are close to confirming the murder of US aid worker Abdul-Rahman (Peter) Kassig. Photograph: Reuters

the Guardian,

16 November, 2014

A desperate two-month campaign by the parents of American hostage Peter Kassig failed after a video showing his beheading was released by Islamic State (Isis) militants.

A statement from US president Barack Obama on Sunday night confirmed that Kassig had been killed after Isis released the video showing the black-clad British executioner thought to have murdered four other western hostages standing over a severed head. Obama offered prayers and condolences to Kassig’s family and said their son “was taken from us in an act of pure evil by a terrorist group that the world rightly associates with inhumanity.”

The Isis video was uploaded after an impassioned campaign by the 26-year-old’s parents for Isis to spare their son, who recently became known as Abdul-Rahman Kassig after he converted to Islam. The family did not immediately acknowledge Kassig’s death. Instead they urged that the 16-minute video should not be disseminated to deny his captors “a chance to further their cause”. Friends of Kassig said they had little doubt he had been killed.

The video was strikingly different to the four others uploaded to the internet since mid-August, which depicted the killings of US reporters James Foley and Steven Sotloff and British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning.

A body is not shown, and nor was Kassig filmed making a final statement. Instead, his apparent death is revealed at the end of a potted history of the group’s evolution over the past decade and the grisly, unedited slaughter of up to 18 captured Syrian soldiers and airmen said to be near the north-east Syrian town of Dabiq.

The hooded man with the east London accent known as “Jihadi John” was again centre stage, narrating a warning to the British prime minister, David Cameron and US president Barack Obama after sawing off the head of a captured Syrian.

“To Obama, the dog of Rome, today we are slaughtering the soldiers of Bashar [al Assad] and tomorrow we’ll be slaughtering your soldiers,” he says. “With Allah’s permission we will break this final and last crusade and the Islamic State will soon, like your puppet David Cameron said, begin to slaughter your people on your streets.” Unlike the killings of other western hostages, the camera does not pan away, as the killer moves a knife over his victim’s throat. Instead it shows him fixing a defiant stare.

Alongside him, 17 men in military fatigues, their faces showing, follow the Briton’s lead. British intelligence officials have known for at least a month the identity of the left-handed masked killer. The officials have focused their attention on former rapper Abdel Majed Abdel Bary, 23, who is known to have travelled to Syria to join Isis.

In the Raqqa region where the executioner is believed to be based, he is known by the nom de guerre Abu Abdullah al-Britani.

The video is shot near pasture land and a hamlet, which is identified as Dabiq – a small town near the Turkish border where Isis fighters believe a pre-apocalyptic showdown will take place.

In recent weeks, the threat to Kassig’s life had drawn condemnation from jihadi leaders in Syria and Jordan who are not aligned to Isis. A senior member of the al-Qaida-aligned Jabhat al-Nusra tweeted this month that Kassig had treated him for a battle wound and said there was no justification under Islam to kill him.

After being deployed in Iraq as a US army ranger, Kassig set up a medical charity to run aid to Syrian refugees in 2007.

He moved to Beirut from where he made regular trips to Syria via Turkey. On 1 October last year he was captured near the eastern Syrian city of Deir el-Zour and then held with a group of western hostages that at one point numbered at least 23.

At some point during his time in the region he converted to Islam and adopted the name Abdul Rahman. His parents, Ed and Paula Kassig, repeatedly used his new name in their pleas to his captors.

Kassig’s family released a letter from him in October, which read in part: “Mentally I am pretty sure this is the hardest thing a man can go through, the stress and fear are incredible but I am coping as best I can. I am not alone.”

Ed and Paula Kassig said yesterday: “We are heartbroken to learn that our son, Abdul-Rahman Peter Kassig, has lost his life as a result of his love for the Syrian people and his desire to ease their suffering. Our heart also goes out to the families of the Syrians who lost their lives, along with our son.

“Fed by a strong desire to use his life to save the lives of others, Abdul-Rahman was drawn to the camps that are filled with displaced families and to understaffed hospitals inside Syria. We know he found his home amongst the Syrian people, and he hurt when they were hurting.

“As he wrote in March 2012, in a letter announcing he was taking a leave of absence from Butler University to serve the Syrian people: ‘Here, in this land, I have found my calling … I do not know much. Every day that I am here I have more questions and less answers, but what I do know is that I have a chance to do something here, to take a stand. To make a difference.’

“We are incredibly proud of our son for living his life according to his humanitarian calling. We will work every day to keep his legacy alive as best we can.

“We remain heartbroken, also, for the families of the other captives who did not make it home safely. The families of James Foley, Steven Sotloff, David Haines, and Alan Henning remain in our daily thoughts and prayers, and we pray for the safe return of all remaining captives held by all sides of the Syrian civil war.

“We remain eternally grateful for the many, many words of support and prayers from all over the world on our son’s behalf. We ask people to continue to pray for the safe return of all captives being held unjustly and all people being oppressed around the world, and especially for the people of Syria, a land our son loved.”

Earlier the family had asked “that the news media avoid playing into the hostage-takers’ hands and refrain from publishing or broadcasting photographs or video distributed by the hostage-takers. We prefer our son is written about and remembered for his important work and the love he shared with friends and family, not in the manner the hostage-takers would use to manipulate Americans and further their cause.”

The family had been unable to raise a ransom demanded by Isis and would have faced stern opposition from the US government even if they had. Washington, like the UK, sticks strictly to a policy of not paying ransoms, in the hope that it will deter kidnappers from seizing their citizens in the future.

Without a ransom though, the Kassigs had next to nothing to offer Isis, which had shown utter inflexibility in negotiations carried out via email. European governments and private donors paid ransoms for at least six of their citizens this year.

In a statement, the National Security Council spokeswoman, Bernadette Meehan, said: “We are aware of a video that claims to show the murder of US citizen Peter Kassig by [Isis]. The intelligence community is working as quickly as possible to determine its authenticity.If confirmed, we are appalled by the brutal murder of an innocent American aid worker and we express our deepest condolences to his family and friends. We will provide more information when it is available.”