Disclaimer: This article may contain the viewpoint and opinion of the author.
It is highly doubtful that The Beatles would ever have expected four men from ISIS would be using their name to instill fear in the minds of people across the Middle East. However, from 2014 to 2017, that is what happened.
Four men of British descent used the nicknames George, John, Ringo, and Paul while kidnapping and executing innocent people in Syria during the height of ISIS’s reign. ISIS stood for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and was a Muslim extremist group terrorizing people in the region.
The nickname was condemned by English musician and former Beatle Ringo Starr, saying: “It’s bullshit. What they are doing out there is against everything The Beatles stood for. We absolutely stood for peace and love.” Beatles fans were also outraged.
The four members had the task of guarding non-muslim prisoners. It is common to say they were guarding Western journalists and aide workers against Europe and the United States. However, they also had Japanese and Russian prisoners they tortured and killed.
These four men were the most brutal of the ISIS guards. They routinely beat, tortured prisoners physically and mentally, and even crucified James Foley, a freelance American reporter. They were so brutal that their commanders eventually removed them from their assigned tasks.
It’s believed the four war criminals killed a total of 27 people by the time their crimes concluded. The most well-known of the victims were Foley, Steven Sotloff, Kayla Mueller, and Peter Kassig.
Foley, Sotloff, and Kassig were all executed in videotaped beheadings publicized by the terrorist network that sought to create a caliphate in Iraq and Syria during the Obama administration. Obama was unable to stop the terror cell.
Obama famously called ISIS the “JV” team yet couldn’t stop their spread across the Middle East. A former senior military commander in the region told the Washington Examiner that the Obama White House was micromanaging the war “to the degree that it was just as bad, if not worse, than Vietnam.
When President Trump came into office the strategy changed dramatically. He was not going to micromanage the war from Washington. He gave more autonomy and control to the battlefield commanders. The plan worked and ISIS was quickly destroyed.
On August 18th, El Shafee Elsheikh was sentenced today to life imprisonment for his participation in the deaths of four American citizens, as well as the deaths of British and Japanese nationals, in Syria, according to the New York Post.
The Islamic fanatic, El Shafee Elsheikh, was convicted in Virginia federal court in April on charges including lethal hostage-taking and conspiracy to commit murder. He was given a chance to address the families of the victims but the ruthless war criminal declined.
The last of the four Beatles was arrested just this past week at a London Airport. Now, the negotiations between American officials and English officials will begin. England will not turn over the murderer to the United States unless the death penalty is taken off the table.
Somehow, the Europeans think they are better than that. However, the reality is, that they are not. It was less than a hundred years ago, that the war tribunals sentenced many Nazi and Japanese officials to death for the war crimes they committed during World War II.
Unless people realize the only thing people like El Shafee Elsheikh understand is violence, it will continue to happen throughout the world. It is evil out there and the only way to deal with evil is to eliminate it.
