The Islamic State has issued a video purporting to show the beheading of American journalist Steven Sotloff. Sotloff was kidnapped in Syria in 2013.
Via NBC News:
The video, titled “A Second Message to America,” opens with a clip of President Barack Obama speaking after ISIS beheaded another American journalist, James Foley, last month. Obama vowed in those remarks to be “relentless” when Americans are harmed.The video then shows Sotloff, wearing an orange jump suit and kneeling, in a sparse desert landscape, next to a black-clad ISIS fighter — a replica of the conditions in the video in which Foley was beheaded.Speaking to the camera, Sotloff questions U.S. intervention in the Middle East and blames Obama for “marching us, the American people, into a blazing fire.”The ISIS fighter then blames Obama for an “arrogant foreign policy towards Islamic State” and for refusing to heed ISIS’s warnings and end military strikes.
Earlier this summer, the Islamic State distributed a video showing the similar, brutal execution of Sotloff’s fellow journalist, James Foley. The groups said that Foley’s execution was retaliation for U.S. air strikes in northern Iraq, and that they would execute another hostage—Sotloff—if the strikes did not cease.
The authenticity of the video has not yet been confirmed.
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