Steven Sotloff

Steven Sotloff
File:Steven Sotloff portrait.jpg
Born	Steven Joel Sotloff (1983-05-11)May 11, 1983 Miami, Florida, U.S.
Disappeared	August 4, 2013 Aleppo, Syria
Died	c. Syrian desert
Cause of death	Decapitation
Ethnicity	Jewish
Citizenship	United States, Israel
Alma mater	Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya
Occupation	Journalist
Employer	Time

Steven Joel Sotloff (Hebrew: סטיבן סוטלוף‎; May 11, 1983 – c. September 2, 2014) was an American-Israeli journalist. In August 2013, he was kidnapped in Aleppo, Syria, and held captive by militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

On September 2, 2014, ISIL released a beheading video, showing one of its members beheading Sotloff. Following Sotloff's beheading, U.S. President Barack Obama stated that the United States will take action to "degrade and destroy" ISIS.

Early life and education

Steven Joel Sotloff held citizenship of both the United States and Israel, although his Jewish background and Israeli citizenship were not made public during his work in Muslim countries or during his captivity for fear that the information might endanger his release. He was the son of Arthur and Shirley Sotloff of Pinecrest, Florida, and a grandson of Holocaust survivors. He grew up in Pinecrest, Florida, graduated from Kimball Union Academy, a private boarding school in Meriden, New Hampshire, and later attended (but did not graduate from) the University of Central Florida with a major in journalism from 2002 to 2004. He studied at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel from 2005 to 2008. Sotloff previously worked for Temple Beth Am Day School in Florida.

Career

According to Al-Jazeera, Sotloff was in Qatar and wrote a letter of application dated May 29, 2010, to the Arabic for Non Native Speakers (ANNS) faculty at Qatar University. He later traveled around the region with a Yemeni mobile number. His career began during the Arab Spring. Sotloff had worked for the news magazine Time, as well as Christian Science Monitor, The National Interest, Media Line, World Affairs, and Foreign Policy, and has appeared on CNN and Fox News. His work took him to Syria a number of times, as well as Egypt, Turkey, Libya, and Bahrain.

In 2012 he reported in Time magazine about Al-Qaeda fighters and commanders from Libya flocking to Syria and shipping Libyan captured arms and ammunition on its way to join the fight to topple Bashar al-Assad's regime. He was also one of a team of reporters that returned to the compound in Benghazi where the US ambassador and three other Americans had been killed on the night of 9/11 that year. He interviewed Libyan security guards who were at the site during the attack. He named a Libyan militia operative, Ahmad Abu Khattallah, as the head of the group (Ansar al-Sharia) that attacked the US compound and as the man who himself masterminded and led the attack. He later reported on a tit for tat retaliation pattern following the US attacks on those that committed the attack on the ambassador's compound in Benghazi. A week before entering Libya, he had written from Turkey about the Alawites there and their support for Assad, while another article written on the same day told about Alawites inside Syria who were against Assad.

Janine Di Giovanni, the Middle East editor of Newsweek, told CNN, "He was concerned that he had been on some kind of a list, and this had been around the time that ISIS had been showing up and taking over checkpoints that had been manned before by the rebels. And he thought he had angered some of the rebels, he didn’t know which ones, by taking footage of a hospital in Aleppo that had been bombed, and he had been very concerned about this."

After his death, Felice Friedson, Sotloff's editor at The Media Line, called him "one of the most courageous, talented and insightful journalists that I have met".

Kidnapping and beheading

Sotloff was kidnapped along with his fixer and the fixer's brother and cousins on August 4, 2013, near Aleppo, after crossing the Syrian border from Turkey. The fixer and his family members were released 15 days later. He was held in Ar-Raqqah. Sotloff fasted secretly during the Jewish fast day of Yom Kippur in September 2013 during his captivity, by feigning illness.

His family kept the news secret, fearing harm to him if they went public. His family and government agencies were working privately to gain his release for the past year.

Sotloff, his family, friends and previous employers such as The Jerusalem Post went to great lengths to keep his Jewish background and Israeli citizenship a secret from his ISIL captors after Sotloff was shown in the beheading video of James Foley. It is unknown if those attempts had any effect, since the information was online for the past duration of his captivity. Following Sotloff's death in October, ISIS published 11 rules that pertain to journalists "who wish to continue working in the governorate." The first rule says all journalists must swear their allegiance as subjects of the Islamic State.

On August 19, 2014, the terrorist organization The Islamic State (IS) released a video titled "A Message to America", showing the beheading of fellow journalist James Foley. At the end of the video, IS threatened President of the United States Barack Obama, telling him that "his next move" will decide the fate of Sotloff.

Only days after this threat was released, the U.S. stepped up airstrikes against IS, firing 14 missiles at various IS Humvees near the Mosul Dam.

Shortly after the release of the video, a petition was started on WhiteHouse.gov, calling for President Obama to save Sotloff's life. The petition attracted thousands of signatures within days. On August 27, 2014, Sotloff's mother released a short video asking Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to release her son.

On September 2, 2014, the SITE Intelligence Group discovered the video of Sotloff's execution on what they called "a file-sharing site" and released it to their subscribers. The video, entitled "A Second Message to America", was discovered purportedly ahead of its intended release by Al-Furqan Media Productions. The video opens with a clip of an August 20 speech by US president Barack Obama denouncing ISIL for the beheading of journalist James Foley followed by a title screen. The video then shows Sotloff, wearing an orange jumpsuit and a wireless microphone, being beheaded by a masked man, later discovered to be Mohammed Emwazi who was described by the media as "Jihadi John" and who was the same person that killed James Foley. Sotloff, kneeling and handcuffed, delivers a prepared statement. In the video, the executioner says, "I'm back, Obama, and I'm back because of your arrogant foreign policy towards the Islamic State, because of your insistence on continuing your bombings and on Mosul Dam, despite our serious warnings. So just as your missiles continue to strike our people, our knife will continue to strike the necks of your people." Jeff Smith, Associate Director of the CU Denver National Center for Media Forensics said “What’s most interesting is that the actual beheading that takes place in the videos, both of them are staged.”

The next scene shows the same executioner holding the orange jumpsuit of another prisoner, British aid worker David Cawthorne Haines, saying "We take this opportunity to warn those governments that enter this evil alliance of America against the Islamic State to back off and leave our people alone."

Lawsuit

On April 20 2016, it was announced that the family of Steven Sotloff were seeking $90 million in damages from Syria in U.S court. The family claims the Assad government provided support for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant which was responsible for his murder .

See also

2

External links

• Articles by Steven Sotloff at Time magazine
• Articles by Steven Sotloff at Foreign Policy
• Steven Sotloff on Twitter
• Steven Joel Sotloff 2lives Foundation a scholarship founded by Sotloff's parents