Sweden charges a man for the murder of Jordano Pilot of 2015 who was burned alive for ISIS

A Swedish man was accused on Tuesday in relation to the murder of a Jordanian pilot of ISIS whose plane fell in Syria on Christmas eve of 2014, prosecutors said.

26 -year -old Jordanian, first lieutenant. Mu’ath al-kasasebehIt was taken captive after his F-16 combat plane crashed near the de facto capital of Raqqa’s extremists in northern Syria. He was forced to enter a cage that caught fire, killing him in the camera in early 2015.

The suspect was identified by Swedish prosecutors as Osama Krayem, 32, who allegedly traveled to Syria in September 2014 to fight for ISIS.

The aviator became the first foreign military pilot known to falling into the hands of the militants after the international coalition led by the United States began its air campaign against Isis in Syria and Iraq in 2014. Jordan, a nearby ally of the United States, was a member of the coalition and murder of the pilot seemed to press the Jordan government to leave the Alliance.

Krayem was accused of “participating in the brutal execution of a pilot” near Raqqa, said prosecutor Reena Devgun to a press conference.

Krayem is scheduled to judge on June 4 in Stockholm. He was previously convicted in France and Brussels for fatal attacks of ISIS in those countries.

Video of the murder

In a 20 minutes Video released in 2015supposedly showing the murder of Al-Kaseasbeh, showed signs of having been beaten, including a purple eye.

In the video, the victim is seen moving to several masked ISIS combatants, including Krayem, according to prosecutors.

Then, the pilot is locked in a cage that sets fires, which leads to his death, Henrik Olin, the other prosecutor in charge of the case.

“This bestial murder, in which a prisoner was burned alive in a cage, was organized in a carefully produced video that was transmitted throughout the world. His publication marked an unprecedented escalation in the violent propaganda of the Islamic State group,” said Olin.

Prosecutors have not been able to determine the exact day of the murder, but the investigation has identified the location where it took place.

The footage was widely launched as part of the propaganda of the militant group.

The murder outrage caused and the antiisis manifestations in Jordan, and King Abdullah II ordered that two al Qaeda prisoners were executed in response.

In 2022, Krayem was among the 20 men convicted by a special terrorism court in Paris for his participation in a wave of ISIS attacks in the French capital in 2015, aimed at the Bataclan Theater, the Paris Cafes and the National Stadium. The assaults killed 130 people and wounded hundreds, some permanently mutilated.

Krayem was sentenced to 30 years in prison, for positions that include complicity of terrorist murder. The French media reported that France agreed in March to deliver Krayem to Sweden for nine months, to help with Swedish research and their expected trial.

Sweden will return him to France so he can comply with his sentence, the French media reported.

In 2023, a Belgian court sentenced Krayem, among others, to life imprisonment for charges of terrorist murder in relation to the suicidal bombings of 2016 that killed 32 people and wounded hundreds at the Brussels airport and an occupied subway station, the most dead peace attack in the country.

Krayem was aboard the nearby train that was beaten, but did not detonate the explosives he carried.

Both the attacks in Paris and Brussels were linked to the same ISIS network.

“It is painful that my parents face this event again, but we are grateful that the Swedish authorities want to give us justice,” said Jawdat al-Kasasbeh, the pilot’s brother, to the issuer Sveriges Radio.

Life in Sweden

Krayem grew in Rosengard, a district known in Sweden due to high crimes and unemployment rates, where more than 80% of residents are first or second generation immigrants.

“He was known by the Local Police for multiple criminal activities such as robberies, for example,” Muhammad Khorshid told News, who led a program in Rosengard to help immigrants to join Swedish society, News in 2016.

He said that Krayem “was the perfect goal for radicalization: without work, without future, without money.”

Krayem had posted photos on the social networks of Syria, including one in which they posed with an assault rifle in front of the black flag of ISIS.

Lost territory

At its peak, ISIS ruled an area of ​​half the size of the United Kingdom in Iraq and Syria and was known for its brutality, much directed against Sunni Muslim companions, as well as against those that the group considered heretics. He gave the civilians, killed 1,700 Iraqi soldiers captured in a short period, and enslaved and violated thousands of women from the Yazidi community, one of Iraq’s oldest religious minorities.

In March 2019, the combatants backed by the United States and led by Kurds of the Syrian Democratic Forces captured the last splinter of land that extremists controlled in the city of Baghouz of Syria oriental. While ISIS has lost its control over the entire territory that once controlled, sleeping cells still organize occasional attacks in Iraq and Syria and abroad.

Arrest in Germany

Also on Tuesday, the German federal prosecutor announced separately the arrest of an alleged member of the Syrian Secret Intelligence Services under former Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. The suspect, who was only appointed as Fahad A. in line with the German privacy rules, was arrested under suspicion of acts of murder, torture and deprivation of liberty as crimes against humanity.

It allegedly participated in more than 100 interrogations between the end of April 2011 and mid -April 2012. At least 70 prisoners died from torture and prison conditions, said the federal prosecutor’s office.

In:
• ISIS
• Jordan
• Sweden

News contributed to this report.