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Death of Kayla Mueller, ISIS Hostage, Confirmed by Family and White House Proof of Death in Hand, Family Honors Hostage
(about 2 hours later)
The parents of Kayla Mueller, the American aid worker abducted by the Islamic State, said Tuesday that they now had proof from the militant group that she was dead, four days after it claimed she had been killed in a Jordanian airstrike. For one tortured weekend, the parents of Kayla Mueller refused to believe that their daughter was dead. From their home in Prescott, Ariz., they issued an impassioned plea to the Islamic State, which had held her captive since August 2013, and urged the extremist organization to contact them privately with proof of her death. The militants acquiesced and sent at least three photographs of her corpse.
The parents, who had publicly maintained hope that she was still alive despite the claim by her abductors, did not specify the proof furnished to them, saying only that American intelligence officials had confirmed the proof's authenticity. The White House also announced that it had confirmed Ms. Mueller was dead. Those photos are among the few clues about her life and death in captivity, as is a letter that she wrote from her cell last year and that her family made public on Tuesday.
But two people who had been briefed on the proof said it consisted of at least three photographs, all headshots. These people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter is so sensitive, said two photographs showed Ms. Mueller in a black Muslim head covering, but that contusions to her face were visible. The third photo, they said, showed Ms. Mueller wrapped in a white burial shroud. Two individuals who had been briefed on the family’s communication with the Islamic State said that her parents received at least three photos. Two showed Ms. Mueller, who was 26, in a black hijab, or Muslim head covering, that partly obscured her face. Another showed her in a white burial shroud, which is used in traditional Muslim funerals. The images showed bruises on the face, but both individuals who reviewed the photographs and asked not to be identified given the sensitivity of the matter, said it remained unclear whether her injuries were consistent with being killed in the rubble of a flattened building, as the Islamic State reported.
It was unclear whether the injuries seen in the photographs were consistent with the Islamic State's assertion that Ms. Mueller, 26, died last Friday when Jordanian bombs flattened a structure in northern Syria where it said she had been held. Jordanian and American officials have challenged that assertion and have blamed the Islamic State for her death. The group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, said on Twitter last week that Ms. Mueller died in a building that had been demolished by Jordanian airstrikes, a claim that both the White House and Jordan’s government said was unfounded.
“We are heartbroken to share that we’ve received confirmation that Kayla Jean Mueller has lost her life,” the parents, Carl and Marsha Mueller, wrote from their home in Prescott, Ariz. “We are so proud of the person Kayla was and the work that she did while she was here with us. She lived with purpose.” Yet the images sent to her family did not completely rule out death in that manner.
A family representative said the Muellers had received a message from their daughter’s captors over the weekend, containing “additional information which the intelligence community authenticated and deemed credible” as proof that she was dead. The representative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, declined to give more details. One of the two people briefed on the evidence said that Ms. Mueller’s face did not show puffiness or other concussive effects associated with a bomb blast, making it unlikely that she was killed when the area was hit, as the Islamic State said. But the same person said that she could have been in a nearby building or struck by flying debris.
Ms. Mueller, who had been working in Turkey for at least two aid organizations dedicated to helping refugees from Syria’s civil war, traveled into Syria by car on Aug. 3, 2013, and was abducted a day later. U.S. officials confirmed that the structure was bombed in coalition airstrikes last week.
She apparently was traveling with a Syrian man, who has been described by some as her boyfriend or fiancé and by others as her friend or colleague. The man had been hired to repair the Internet connection at the compound used by Doctors Without Borders, the international medical charity, in the war-struck Syrian city of Aleppo. The authorities insisted that the building, a weapons storage facility, was a legitimate target and explained that they had conducted detailed surveillance to make sure that no hostages were seen going in or out. But a senior American official who requested anonymity to discuss classified information acknowledged that they had not been able to survey the building around the clock.
Employees of the charity said they had been expecting him to come alone, and were dumbfounded to see Ms. Mueller arrive with him. At the time, Western aid workers were avoiding travel into Syria because of the high risk of kidnapping. “We have no definitive evidence of how, or when, she died,” he added.
The pair stayed overnight at the Doctors Without Borders compound, and were kidnapped the next day, Aug. 4, on their way to the Aleppo bus depot for their return journey to Turkey, according to a statement issued by the charity. The Syrian man was released after a brief captivity, and has declined to comment. Described by friends and family members as a deeply idealistic young woman eager to help those less fortunate, Ms. Mueller was just shy of her 25th birthday on Aug. 4, 2013, when she disappeared in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo.
In a letter to her family that was smuggled out of Syria, which the Muellers shared publicly for the first time on Tuesday, Ms. Mueller wrote that she had not been mistreated, unlike several of the American and European hostages held by the Islamic State who are known to have been tortured, including by waterboarding. She had arrived in Syria a day earlier with a Syrian man who has been described as her boyfriend or colleague.
“Everyone, if you are receiving this letter it means I am still detained but my cellmates … have been released,” she wrote in the letter, which is not dated. “Please know that I am in a safe location, completely unharmed + healthy (put on weight in fact); I have been treated w/utmost respect + kindness.” He had been contracted to fix the Internet connection at a Doctors Without Borders office, and employees of the international charity were flabbergasted when Ms. Mueller showed up with him.
The details of her captivity remain blurry. European and Syrian hostages who have been released by the Islamic State said they had been held in cells adjoining hers in a former potato chip factory north of Aleppo, as well as in at least two locations in Raqqa, the capital of the group’s self-declared caliphate. Men and women were held in separate cells in both locations, they said, but in at least one compound they were able to communicate with Ms. Mueller through the wall. Syria was then a no-go zone for most international aid workers, said employees of the charity, who explained that they reluctantly housed her overnight and agreed to drive her to a bus station for what was supposed to be her trip back to Turkey.
In Raqqa, she briefly had the company of three female employees of Doctors Without Borders. They were subsequently released. At the height of the hostage crisis in early 2014, she was one of at least 23 Western hostages, most of them Europeans, who were held by the Islamic State. Ms. Mueller and the three medical charity workers were the only women among them. Her car was ambushed on the way, and she and her Syrian companion were abducted. He was later freed and has declined to speak about what happened.
“The women were, in general, treated well,” said a former European hostage, and were not overtly abused the way male hostages were. Once in the hands of the militants, Ms. Muelller was forced to wear the hijab and was placed in a cell with female detainees, according to two former hostages held in the same facility. She was moved a number of times, and witnesses saw her inside a potato chip factory near Aleppo and later at a prison set up on the grounds of a gas installation in Raqqa, the capital of the group’s self-declared caliphate.
At a White House news conference, Josh Earnest, the Obama administration’s spokesman, said the information received by the Mueller family, as analyzed by intelligence officials, did not provide any insight into how she had died. Mr. Earnest also said, “I do not believe they were able to conclude when she died.” While many of the male hostages were tortured, the female captives, including three female staffers of Doctors Without Borders, were treated relatively well, according to a European hostage who met Ms. Mueller during his monthslong captivity last year. The women were not beaten, he said, and he said he believed that they were not sexually molested.
However, Mr. Earnest disputed the Islamic State’s assertion that Ms. Mueller was killed in an airstrike last Friday conducted by Jordanian warplanes, which are participants in the American-led campaign to bomb areas in Syria and Iraq held by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. This seemed to be confirmed in a letter that Ms. Mueller last spring wrote to her family and that her parents released on Tuesday. On a piece of lined notebook paper, she wrote in crowded, cursive script: “Everyone, if you are receiving this letter it means I am still detained but my cellmates ... have been released,” she said in the undated letter.
There was no evidence, Mr. Earnest said, “of civilians in the target area before the coalition strike.” And in any case, he said, the Islamic State militants who were holding Ms. Mueller “were responsible for her safety and well-being.” “Please know that I am in a safe location, completely unharmed + healthy (put on weight in fact); I have been treated w/utmost respect + kindness.”
“Therefore,” Mr. Earnest said, “they are responsible for her death.” She begged her family for forgiveness: “If you could say I have ‘suffered’ at all throughout this whole experience it is only in knowing how much suffering I have put you all through,” she wrote. “I will never ask you to forgive me as I do not deserve forgiveness.”
Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, also blamed the Islamic State for Ms. Mueller’s death, but offered no details on how or when she died. In Arizona, her extended family and friends gathered by the steps of the Yavapai County courthouse to ponder what drove her to such a dangerous place. They and others described a deeply committed young woman who refused to avert her eyes from the suffering of others.
“ISIL is responsible for that death,” Admiral Kirby told reporters at the Pentagon. “But we're not in a position to confirm the circumstances specifically, either to timing or to cause of death.” “Kayla has touched the heart of the world,” said her aunt Lori Lyon, speaking on behalf of the family.
Admiral Kirby expressed confidence that the military’s process for selecting targets — and avoiding risks to civilians — had been carefully followed in the attack on the building where ISIS said Ms. Mueller had been killed. Her desire to help solve world problems was already on display in high school, where she became involved with a campaign that aimed to stop Flagstaff, Ariz., city officials from using recycled waste water to make snow on a set of peaks considered sacred to the Hopi people. By the time she enrolled at Northern Arizona University in 2007, the Save the Peaks campaign was just one of an array of causes she was engaged with, says her former classmate, Leslie Alamer, who helped set up a website honoring her friend’s legacy
“We have no indication that there were civilian casualties as a result of those strikes,” Admiral Kirby said. “Every time I ran into her on campus, she was organizing something, or talking about a new issue, or else inviting me to an event. She was so active,” said Ms. Alamer, 28, rattling off the causes Ms. Mueller joined, including one that called attention to atrocities in Darfur.
In Prescott, Mueller family members and friends held a midafternoon news conference on the steps of the Yavapai County Courthouse to remember Ms. Mueller for the passion that compelled her to go to the Middle East. In college, she began researching accusations of mistreatment of detainees at the military base in Guantánamo Bay, Ms. Alamer said.
“Kayla has touched the heart of the world,” said her maternal aunt, Lori Lyon, speaking on behalf of the family. “The world grieves with us. The world mourns with us. The world wants to be more like Kayla.” After graduating in 2009, Ms. Mueller moved to India, and soon after to Israel. In 2010, she volunteered with the International Solidarity Movement in the Palestinian territories, according to Abdullah Abu Rahma, the group’s coordinator in the village of Bil’in.
Kathleen Day, the head of the United Christian Ministry at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, said she had grown close to Ms. Mueller when she was a student at the school. They would talk about the world over dinners and even traveled together to Guatemala, she said. He said that Ms. Mueller joined them in using nonviolent means to protest the Israeli occupation. She lived with families in East Jerusalem in order to try to prevent the demolition of their homes. On her blog, she described sleeping in front of half-destroyed homes, using her body as a shield against the bulldozers they feared were coming.
Ms. Mueller wanted to share what she had seen in Syria — the lack of basic essentials and electricity but also the way people had banded together. She wrote blog posts and sent home messages asking for people to take action. Kathleen Day, head of the United Christian ministry at Northern Arizona University, remembers how Ms. Mueller used her blog as a way to encourage her peers to get involved. She didn’t just write a blog post and leave it at that: She sent it to friends and family, asking them to forward it to others and to take action.
In Ms. Mueller's death, Ms. Day said, the world was seeing up close what had been happening to the Syrian people after years of war. “It’s not that she’s so angelic,” Ms. Day said. “She saw things and did what she could, whatever she could, however she could.”
“We’re seeing your suffering reflected in Kayla’s eyes,” she said. “It’s not that she’s so angelic. She saw things and did what she could, whatever she could, however she could.”