This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/25/world/middleeast/britain-james-foley-isis.html

The article has changed 9 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 0 Version 1
Britain Said to Be ‘Close’ to Identifying Suspect in Journalist’s Beheading Britain Said to Be ‘Close’ to Identifying Suspect in Journalist’s Beheading
(about 2 hours later)
WASHINGTON — The British ambassador to the United States said on Sunday that British authorities were “close” to identifying the man who beheaded the American journalist James W. Foley, who had been held captive by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. The British ambassador to the United States said on Sunday that investigators are close to identifying the young militant with a London accent who beheaded the American journalist James Foley on a video released last week by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
ISIS, which claimed responsibility for Mr. Foley’s gruesome death, last week posted a chilling video of the event that shows a tall, square-shouldered man in black who speaks with a British accent before beheading the 40-year-old journalist in front of a stark desert backdrop. The ambassador, Peter Westmacott, said in an interview on CNN that British counterterrorism officers, supported by American counterparts, were making progress in using clues in the video to pick the killer out of the hundreds of British Muslims who have joined ISIS. “I do know from my colleagues at home that we are close,” he said. “But forgive me if I can’t go much farther than that at this point.”
“We are close," the ambassador, Peter Westmacott, said in an interview on the CNN program “State of the Union,” responding to a question about reports in several British newspapers suggesting that intelligence analysts, after an intense review of the visual and vocal clues provided by the video, had narrowed their search to a few suspects. The ambassador said investigators were using voice-recognition technology to match the killer’s voice against recordings of known British militants now in Syria and Iraq. “We’re putting out a great deal of resource into identifying this person,” he said. “And there are some very sophisticated technologies, voice identification and so on, which people can use to check who these people are.”
Mr. Westmacott would not go into further detail, and it was not clear what steps British authorities might take even if they did determine the identity of the killer, who presumably is operating in a lawless region controlled by ISIS and spanning the border of Syria and Iraq. If Mr. Foley’s killer is positively identified, it might give intelligence officials insight into the ISIS kidnapping cell still holding another American reporter, Steven Sotloff, and other hostages, and could lead to criminal charges. But with extremists in control of large parts of Syria and Iraq, it would be hard even to locate the suspect and highly risky to try to take him into custody any time soon. An attempt early this summer by American Delta Force commandoes to rescue Mr. Foley and other hostages in Syria failed because they had been moved.
President Obama said last week that the United States would be “relentless” in pursuing Mr. Foley’s killers, and American warplanes have launched dozens of airstrikes against militants loyal to ISIS. “If things stay the way they are now, it would be difficult” to kill or capture the suspect, said a senior American law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. The official said that the F.B.I. and C.I.A., working with their British counterparts, MI-5 and MI-6, had narrowed to “a short list” the suspects in Mr. Foley’s execution.
Asked on CNN about a possible British military role in helping to roll back ISIS, Mr. Westmacott offered a blunt reply. The five-minute video released by ISIS, now the focus of intensive forensic analysis by British and American authorities, is narrated in part by the killer, wearing a black hood with eyeholes, who addresses the camera in English before putting a knife in his left hand to the journalist’s throat. The video then skips ahead to show Mr. Foley’s severed head atop his corpse in the sand, with what appears to be a different knife lying nearby.
“We’re not getting involved in another Iraq war,” he said. “We’re also not supplying lethal equipment at this point.” From analysis of the video images, investigators could estimate the man’s height, study details of his eyes and eyebrows and note his evident left-handedness. His voice likely has been matched against recordings of many of the estimated 500 militant Britons estimated to have joined ISIS, about half of whom are believed to have returned home.
He noted, however, that British planes had helped provide humanitarian relief to civilians caught up in the violence, and added that “we are looking very actively at what we can do that is helpful,” along with not just the United States, but also regional allies. British counterterrorism agencies conduct extensive eavesdropping on suspected extremists inside the United Kingdom and have archived recordings of many of them. In addition, some foreigners who have joined ISIS have left long Web trails that include audio of their voices on YouTube and other sites.
The murder video, which incorporated footage of Mr. Obama announcing American airstrikes on ISIS and Mr. Foley’s final words to his family, reflected the sophistication of ISIS’ extensive media efforts, aimed in part at recruiting more fighters from the West, said Rita Katz, director of the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist communications.
While President Obama said last week that “the entire world is appalled by the brutal murder” of Mr. Foley, the president’s remarks did not take into account many young Muslims who support ISIS and have been vocal in their praise for Mr. Foley’s murder and the video in particular, Ms. Katz said. Some Twitter users posted excited praise for the video and a few took images from the beheading video to use as their profile pictures on social media sites.
“Did you see what we can do? There is more!!” wrote one ISIS supporter monitored by SITE. Another wrote, “I was happy to see the beheading of that kaafir.” Kaafir is the Arabic word for unbeliever.
To judge by Twitter and other social media, “British militants have been impressed that this was done by a British guy,” said Raffaello Pantucci, director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute and author of a forthcoming book about Muslim extremists in Britain.
Far from sharing the revulsion of most viewers, those who see ISIS as defending Islam from Western aggression found the video “empowering,” Mr. Pantucci said. “They say, ‘Look at what we can do, and the powerful Americans can’t do a thing about it.’ They feel they’re part of a community that accepts this and thinks it’s a glorious thing to do.”
Other hostages held by ISIS have said they began calling their British captors by the names of the Beatles, and the killer of Mr. Foley was known as “John,” with others nicknamed “Paul” and “Ringo.” British and American authorities have so far been unwilling to say who they believe the killer to be, perhaps because to name him without being able to capture or kill him would simply add to his luster in the extremist world.
Speculation among terrorism experts and the British press has focused on a number of militants known to have joined ISIS, including a 24-year-old London rapper named Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary. Mr. Bary’s father, Adel Abdel Bary, was extradited to the United from Britain in 2012 after a long legal battle to face terrorism charges in Al Qaeda’s bombing of two American embassies in East Africa in 1998.
The younger Mr. Bary had considerable success rapping under the name “L Jinny” or “Lyricist Jinn,” with singles played on BBC radio and much-watched videos on YouTube. Some of his raps, Mr. Pantucci said, referred to his father’s prosecution. He left his family’s London home last year to travel to Syria, where he joined ISIS and frequently posted to Twitter.
Earlier this year, Mr. Bary tweeted a photograph of himself holding a severed head with the comment, “Chillin’ with my homie or what’s left of him.” But Mr. Pantucci said that he appeared to have simply picked up and posed with one of many severed heads after a mass beheading by ISIS in the Syrian town of Raqqa. Posing with a severed head is common enough among ISIS fighters, he said, that the tweet alone does not point to any connection to Mr. Foley’s later execution.