Daesh 'Beatle' Member Elsheikh Sentenced to Life for Killing American Hostages

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - Former British citizen El Shafee Elsheikh, who was a member of a Daesh* cell known as the Beatles, was sentenced to life in prison in US court on Friday for murdering four American hostages in Syria between 2014 and 2015, the Justice Department said.

"The highest-ranking fighter for the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a foreign terrorist organization, to have ever faced a jury trial in the United States was sentenced today to life imprisonment for his participation in a brutal hostage-taking scheme that resulted in the deaths of four American citizens, as well as the deaths of British and Japanese nationals, in Syria," the Justice Department said in a press release.

On April 14, Elsheikh was convicted by a US jury in federal court in the state of Virginia for all the offenses in an eight-count indictment, which included one count of conspiracy to commit hostage taking resulting in death; four counts of hostage resulting in the deaths of the four Americans, one count of conspiracy to murder US citizens outside of the United States, among others, the release said.

*Daesh, also known as IS/Islamic State/ISIS, is a terrorist group banned in Russia.