The Islamic State (IS) has beheaded a second American journalist, Steven Scotloff, reports are saying.
This is the second incident in two weeks, after journalist James Foley was similarly executed on 19 August.
This report on Wednesday:
The Associated Press and the SITE Intel Group, an organization that tracks the online activity of terrorist groups, both reported on Tuesday that the Islamic State has posted a video of the execution barely two weeks after the group formerly known as ISIS published a similar clip of American photojournalist James Foley suffering the same fate.
“I’m back, Obama, and I’m back because of your arrogant foreign policy towards the Islamic State,” a masked militant believed to be the same who executed Foley addresses the president in the latest video.
[snip]
The White House could not immediately confirm the authenticity of the latest video, “A Second Message to America,” but press secretary Joshua Earnest said during a briefing on Tuesday that the administration’s “thoughts and prayers” are with Sotloff’s family. Jen Psaki, a spokesperson for the US Department of State, said she was “sickened” by the news, and British Prime Minister David Cameron called it an “absolutely disgusting, despicable act.”
A 31-year-old freelance journalist who has written for Time magazine and the Christian Science Monitor, among others, Sotloff was kidnapped near Aleppo, Syria in August 2013. According to a profile published in the New York Times last month, Sotloff’s family tried desperately during the last year to keep his abduction quiet due to fears that the publicity would endanger him further, but changed course recently after the Islamic State warned that he’d be among the next executed lest the United State end its campaign against the militants.
American intelligence is trying to verify the authenticity of the video.
Read the full report here: “Second American journalist beheaded by ISIS terrorists”
