The Islamic State militant group released a video today purporting to show the beheading of U.S. hostage Steven J. Sotloff.
A masked figure in the video also issued a threat against a British hostage, a man the group named as David Haines, and warned governments to back off "this evil alliance of America against the Islamic State", the SITE Intelligence Group monitoring service said.
The purported executioner appeared to be the same British-accented man who appeared in an Aug. 19 video showing the killing of American journalist James Foley, and it showed a similar desert setting. In both videos, the captives wore orange jumpsuits.
"I'm back, Obama, and I'm back because of your arrogant foreign policy towards the Islamic State, because of your insistence on continuing your bombings and ... on Mosul Dam, despite our serious warnings," the man said.
"So just as your missiles continue to strike our people, our knife will continue to strike the necks of your people."
In the video, Sotloff describes himself as "paying the price" for the U.S. intervention in Iraq with his life.
Sotloff, a freelance journalist, was kidnapped in Syria in August 2013. Sotloff's mother Shirley appealed on Aug. 27 in a videotaped message to Islamic State's self-proclaimed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, for her son's release.
The White House said it could not immediately confirm the authenticity of the video. White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters in a briefing that if there is such a video, it would be analyzed very carefully, adding that the administration's thoughts and prayers were with Sotloff's family.
Shortly before the briefing, the SITE monitoring service said the militant group had released the video.
On Aug. 19 the group published a video showing the beheading of Foley, a Marquette and Northwestern alum. The group said his death was in retaliation for U.S. airstrikes on fighters in Iraq.
That video was issued after the United States resumed air strikes in Iraq in August for the first time since the end of the U.S. occupation in 2011.
U.S. HOSTAGES
After Islamic State's beheading of journalist James Foley, President Barack Obama's administration is making little headway in efforts to secure the release of other Americans held by the insurgent group in Syria, officials said.
The U.S. government has said it does not pay ransoms or negotiate with the Islamic State.
Washington has contacted about two dozen countries for help in freeing the three, but no foreign government appears to have influence over or even significant contact with IS, which has declared an Islamic caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria.
"What we've found is that ISIS isn't responsive" to outreach, said a senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity and using an alternate acronym for the group.
Another administration official said Washington was working with other Western countries whose citizens are being held hostage, and with Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and others in the region thought by the United States to possibly have influence with the groups Al-Nusrah and IS.
The hostages' fate received little public attention until Islamic State posted an online video on Aug. 19 showing Foley's beheading. It now presents a frustrating challenge for Obama.
Islamic State "is far more difficult to deal with" than Iran or the militant group Hezbollah, which also took Americans captive, said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA and White House official now at the Brookings Institution think-tank. The group "wants to terrorize Americans, it's not really interested in deals."
WHITE HOUSE INVOLVEMENT
U.S. officials and supporters of the remaining hostages requested that most details about them and efforts to free them be withheld.
One of the other U.S. hostages is a female aid worker, age 26, for whom Islamic State has demanded $6.6 million in ransom, according to ABC News.
Lisa Monaco, Obama's top counter-terrorism adviser, has been "very deeply involved in this," the senior U.S. official said. Monaco, along with the State Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation, has been in contact with hostages' families, the official said.
Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, said, " The Administration has had regular interactions with the families of those Americans who have been held hostage in Syria since the kidnapping of their loved ones. These interactions included representatives from all the relevant agencies, including the Department of State, the FBI, the Intelligence Community, and the White House."
Obama authorized a covert raid in Syria in July to rescue Foley and other American hostages, but they were not at the site where they were thought to be held. Another rescue attempt would be risky for U.S. special forces and the hostages.
The American diplomatic effort also is aimed at persuading European countries not to pay ransoms, officials said.
U.S. and European officials have said that France, Spain and Italy have tolerated or facilitated ransom payments for citizens held in Syria. Islamic State released numerous European journalists this year, including two Spaniards in March and four Frenchmen in April.
The French government has denied a news report that it paid a ransom to free the four. Spain's foreign ministry has not commented on the matter.
The U.S. policy of refusing to pay ransoms to discourage further hostage-taking "is as close as we are likely to come to governments influencing ISIS on the matter of seizing hostages", said Paul Pillar, a former senior CIA analyst now at Georgetown University.
U.S. officials have said that Qatar played a critical role in persuading a rival group in Syria, the official al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, to free American journalist Peter Theo Curtis, whom it had been holding since 2012.
Qatar is working to help free other Americans held captive in Syria, a Gulf source told Reuters, but U.S. officials said the Qatari government has little if any leverage with Islamic State.
Reuters
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