The mother of British Daesh fighter, El Shafee Elsheikh, is due to launch a new high court bid this month to force the UK government to bring him home to stand trial.
Maha Elgizouli, whose son is one of the so-called Daesh* ‘Beatles,’ reportedly claims that according to her lawyer, there is now enough evidence to bring Mr Elsheikh, 30, to stand trial in the UK rather than to allow him to be taken to the US where it is very likely that he will face the death sentence for the murder of American and British journalists and aid workers in Syria while fighting with Daesh.
Mr Elsheikh and his fellow inmate in Syria, Alexanda Kotey, 35, were both members of the Beatles cell, which stands accused of beheading seven Westerners and were this week moved from Kurdish detention facilities in northern Syria to an “undisclosed location” in Iraq. It is believed that they will soon be flown to Virginia in the US where they will stand trial. US President Donald Trump has previously referred to the men as “the worst of the worst.”
Elsheikh and Kotey, both from West London, were stripped of their British citizenship for fighting with Daesh.
Miss Elgizouli will reportedly take legal action against the UK Crown Prosecution Service on the grounds that it did not sufficiently assess the evidence that could have been used to bring her son back to the UK for trial, where unlike the US, the death sentence is outlawed.
It will be Miss Elgizouli’s second attempt to pressure the UK government to bring her son back to Britain after she previously appealed to the UK Supreme Court to prevent Mr Elsheikh’s transfer to the US without first getting a guarantee from Washington that he would not face the death penalty. The decision on that judgement is soon to be released.
UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace was reported in 2018 to have said that the British government did not have the necessary evidence to try the Beatles in the UK, and that a trial in the US was the only other option to ensure that the terrorists face justice.
Before being transferred to Iraq, Mr Elsheikh said in an interview with UK ITV news that, “if the UK wants to put me on trial then I will defend myself with what I can, I will admit to what I admit to, and defend myself with what I defend myself on, that’s it.”
When asked about the possibility of being extradited and sentenced in the US, Mr Elsheikh simply said that he “never committed a crime in the Untied States.”
*Terrorist group banned in Russia and many other countries