Peter Kassig with a truck filled with supplies for Syrian refugees in an undated photograph provided by the Kassig family. Credit Kassig Family, via Associated Press
GAZIANTEP, Turkey — President Obama on Sunday confirmed the death of the American aid worker Peter Kassig, a former Army Ranger who disappeared over a year ago at a checkpoint in northeastern Syria while delivering medical supplies.
The president’s midafternoon statement came hours after the Islamic State released a video showing a black-clad executioner standing over the severed head of a man it identified as Mr. Kassig.
Mr. Kassig “was taken from us in an act of pure evil by a terrorist group,†Mr. Obama said in a statement from aboard Air force One that was read to the news media in Washington.
In recent days, American intelligence agencies received strong indications that the Islamic State had killed Mr. Kassig. The president’s announcement was the first official confirmation of his death.
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“Today we offer our prayers and condolences to the parents and family of Abdul-Rahman Kassig, also known to us as Peter,†Mr. Obama’s statement said. The president used the Muslim name Mr. Kassig had adopted, making the point that the Islamic State had killed one of its own. He acknowledged the “anguish at this painful time†felt by Mr. Kassig’s family.
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At least 23 foreign hostages from 12 countries have been kidnapped by Syrian insurgents, sold or handed over to the Islamic State, and held underground in a prison near the Syrian city of Raqqa.
The video footage circulated by the Islamic State, the violent jihadist group also known as ISIS or ISIL, was significantly different from the execution videos of four other Western hostages, whose televised deaths were carefully choreographed.
Those videos were shot with several cameras from different vantage points to give the appearance of a professional production. By contrast, the footage of Mr. Kassig’s death is shot with a single camera and appears amateurish, with the harsh lighting obscuring the executioners’ visage.
While in the earlier videos the hostages are seen kneeling in orange jumpsuits and are forced to make speeches before the executioner lifts the knife to their throats, in the one released Sunday, the moments leading up to Mr. Kassig’s death are not shown. The change in format — combined with the lower production quality of the clip — may suggest that the Islamic State is on the run and unable to pull off the same cinematic production as before.
The camera pans across the boots of the hooded killer. Between his feet, a decapitated head is seen, blood smearing the cheek.
“This is Peter Edward Kassig, a U.S. citizen of your country. Peter, who fought against the Muslims in Iraq while serving as a soldier under the American Army doesn’t have much to say. His previous cellmates have already spoken on his behalf,†says the fighter who speaks with a British accent, appeared in the previous beheading videos and has been nicknamed Jihadi John by the British news media. “You claim to have withdrawn from Iraq four years ago. We said to you then that you are liars.â€
An Indianapolis native, Mr. Kassig turned to humanitarian work after a tour in Iraq in 2007, where he served as an Army Ranger. He was certified as an emergency medical technician, and in 2011, he returned to the battlefield — this time helping bandage the wounded in Libya in the final days of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s administration. By 2012, he had moved to Beirut, where he founded a small aid group and initially used his savings to buy supplies, like diapers, which he distributed to the Syrian refugees who were flooding into Lebanon.
In the summer of 2013, he relocated to Gaziantep, this city in southern Turkey roughly one hour from the Syrian border, and began making regular trips into Syria to offer medical care to the wounded. His friend Emma Beals, a freelance journalist, described in an article how Mr. Kassig helped care for a government sniper, despite the fact that the fighter had been taking shots at anyone who passed over the single bridge into the town.
When the sniper was himself injured, he was taken to the hospital where Mr. Kassig worked in the city of Deir al-Zour. The medical team worked silently to amputate the man’s leg, even though some of the doctors had lost family members to the sniper.
It was to this same town that Mr. Kassig was headed in an ambulance loaded with medical supplies when he was abducted on Oct. 1, 2013. He was transferred late last year to a prison beneath the basement of the Children’s Hospital in Aleppo, and then to a network of jails in Raqqa, the capital of the extremist group’s self-declared caliphate, where he became one of at least 23 Western hostages held by the group.
His cellmates included two American journalists James Foley and Steven J. Sotloff, as well as the British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, who were beheaded in roughly two-week increments starting this August.
Each video appeared to be filmed in the same location, identified by analysts using geo-mapping as a hill outside the city of Raqqa. Each video was relatively short — under five minutes on average — and included a speech by the hostage, in which he is forced to accuse his government for alleged crimes against Muslims as the masked killer stands by holding the knife.
In contrast, Mr. Kassig’s death appears in the final two minutes of a nearly 16-minute video, which traces the history of the Islamic State from its origins in Iraq as a unit under the control of Osama bin Laden to its modern-day incarnation in the region straddling Iraq and Syria.
In one extended sequence, a mass beheading of captured Syrian soldiers is shown. Over the sound of Quranic chants, the handcuffed victims are shown being led out in a line, held by the scruffs of their necks. Each fighter is seen grabbing a knife from a bowl. Then the victims are forced to kneel. They are beheaded at the same moment.
In the middle is Jihadi John. Just after killing his victim, he looks up. Through the slits in his black mask, the viewer can see his eyes. Defiantly, he stares at the camera.
The footage of Mr. Kassig’s head is markedly less professional and comes at the tail end of this footage, as if to force viewers to watch the scenes that come before, said a terrorism expert, Jean-Charles Brisard, whose study on Bin Laden was published by the French National Assembly.
“This is why I am pretty sure that the real focus is not on Peter Kassig,†Mr. Brisard said, but on the mass killing of Syrian soldiers and the statements on the genesis of the group.
“Obviously there was something that happened during the filming†of the Kassig execution, Mr. Brisard said, adding, “We know that the past executions were filmed from multiple perspectives, so perhaps something happened here that prevented them from doing so.â€
Mr. Brisard said that it is possible that Mr. Kassig resisted, and tried to oppose his executioner, which would have made the filming impossible. It could also suggest that the group is on the move and unable to carry out the same open-air scenario as it did in Raqqa.
The executioner states that the killing is taking place in Dabiq, a village in Aleppo Province, which has symbolic significance because it is mentioned in Islamic scripture as the place where an epic battle occurred between Muslims and infidels.
The killer ends by saying, “Here we are burying the first American Crusader in Dabiq – eagerly waiting for the rest of your armies to arrive.â€
Former hostages held alongside Mr. Kassig described how he worried that his past as an Iraq war veteran might doom him. His record of service was quickly discovered by their extremist captors, who forced the hostages to hand over the passwords to their email and social media accounts, then scanned their emails, Facebook timelines and private chats for evidence of collusion with foreign governments.
“One day, the guards burst in, and they said: ‘Peter?'   " recalled one of Mr. Kassig’s cellmates, who was released for ransom this year. “He said, ‘Yes, sir.’ And then the guard said, ‘Are you a soldier?'   “
There was a pause. And then Mr. Kassig answered, “Yes, sir,†said the former hostage, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss a sensitive matter.
In the months leading up to his death, Mr. Kassig seemed to know the end was near.
In a letter to his parents smuggled out this summer, he describes his fear: “I am obviously pretty scared to die, but the hardest part is not knowing, wondering, hoping and wondering if I should even hope at all,†he wrote. “Just know I’m with you. Every stream, every lake, every field and river. In the woods and in the hills, in all the places you showed me. I love you.â€
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