Washington: Jihadists from Britain known as the Isis “Beatles” are assembling top legal team to defend them in America against charges of kidnapping and murdering western hostages. One of the experts hired by El Shafee Elsheikh, 32, and Alexanda Kotey, 36, previously represented Rose McGowan, the actress who accused disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of rape. Another member of the team has represented a Catholic archbishop Theodore McCarrick defrocked by the Pope.
Kotey and Elsheikh were secretly flown to America last week from a US military base in Iraq after their capture in Syria in 2018. The Londoners, who have been stripped of their British citizenship, appeared via videolink at a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, to face eight counts each of involvement in the torture and murder in Syria of western hostages. They pleaded not guilty.
If convicted, they face life behind bars in solitary confinement at a maximum security prison in Colorado. Although their trial will focus on the torture and murder of four American citizens, other alleged victims of the Beatles gang included the British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning. The fate of another hostage, John Cantlie, a British photojournalist, remains unknown.
The leader of the gang was Mohammed Emwazi, 27, a fellow west Londoner known as Jihadi John, who was killed by a US drone strike in Syria in 2015. Elsheikh’s lawyers include a roster of terrorism experts. His trump card is likely to be Edward B MacMahon, who travelled to Guantanamo Bay to represent Walid bin Attash, a key planner of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, and the bombing of the USS Cole warship in Yemen a year earlier.
Moussaoui, a former student at South Bank University in London, was spared the death penalty in 2006 after a trial at the same court in Alexandria where Elsheikh and Kotey will go before a jury next year. However, they will not face capital punishment if convicted after an assurance given in summer by William Barr, the US attorney-general, to the British government in return for evidence on the two suspects gathered by Scotland Yard and MI5.
Elsheikh’s defence team also includes Jessica Carmichael, who acted last year for Nicholas Young, a former US police officer and convert to Islam convicted of providing support to Isis. A third attorney hired by Elsheikh is Nina Ginsberg, a leading criminal lawyer based in Virginia with experience of sensitive national security cases. Kotey, meanwhile, has appointed Barry Coburn, another veteran, best known for defending the former archbishop McCarrick, 90, of Washington.
