Crazy what facing certain death will do for these cowards. It’s all fun and games until a tribunal in Baghdad is ready to hang you.

CNN decided to interview a pair monsters named Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh. The interview is you typical kid gloves presentation, including attempts to further humanize them as broken and “drained.” Killing people will do that I guess.

Two of the remaining members of the British ISIS cell known as “the Beatles” have confessed their part in the ransoming of Western hostages in a rare interview that showed them broken and pleading for news of their fate. One of the fighters also offered an unprecedented apology for his actions with the group.

Kotey and Elsheikh are from the United Kingdom and joined ISIS as part of a group known as “the Beatles,” which included the now deceased “Jahidi John.” He was killed back in 2015 and infamously appeared in videos beheading western hostages.

To show how serious they are, one of them won’t even apologize for his role in the killings.

Kotey — whose year mostly in solitary confinement appears to have removed the arrogance he displayed when interviewed by CNN a year ago — declined to offer an apology. But he admitted taking email addresses from European hostages and assisting in the ransom negotiations that followed with relatives and friends.

“I was a fighter,” Kotey said. “Extracting from them email addresses for communications. For example, if it was a proof of life question, something that only they would be able to answer.” Asked why he agreed to this task, he replied: “It just so happened that way.”

If that doesn’t scream remorseful, what does?

Regardless, it shouldn’t matter if they now feel remorse. They joined a foreign terrorist army and helped facilitate in the murders of hostages. Furthermore, they won’t even fully admit to what they did, instead choosing to gaslight everyone by claiming they had no part in the murders or tortue.

The pair currently being held in Syria are accused of torturing the hostages they kept in their care. The US State Department has accused Kotey, 35, originally from Ladbroke Grove in London, of having “likely engaged in the group’s executions and exceptionally cruel torture” of their Western journalist and aid worker hostages. Elsheikh “was said to have earned a reputation for water-boarding, mock executions, and crucifixions,” according to the State Department.

The men denied involvement in the murders and physical abuse of hostages, saying they had been transferred to another unit before the violence began. Several former hostages however, have said they were tortured by masked British-accented men matching their descriptions.

Ricardo Garcia Vilanova, a Spanish photographer imprisoned by the group for about six months before his release in 2014, told CNN: “I was tortured in an ISIS jail by masked men with British accents. Many other of my fellow prisoners were too, and some didn’t survive captivity. We would want that they see justice for what they did.”

The claim that they simply didn’t participate in any of what happened doesn’t even begin to pass muster. There werne’t exactly a rash of British guys walking around and eye witnesses put them on the scene torturing people. While they may have not killed anyone personally (but they probably did), there’s no doubt they helped move the process along.

Now, after all they’ve done, they just want to be extradited and for the episode to be over.

Elsheikh said: “If anything, I think that a confession will maybe hasten our extradition or rendition to the United States, I don’t think this is something that will prevent me going to the United States at all. I don’t see how that would be possible. I just want this period to be over. I know what needs to be done. The truth has to come out.”

Painting yourself as a truth teller after you imprisoned, tortured, and helped murder innocent people isn’t a good look and will certainly do nothing for their chances of being brought to the United States for a trial.

CNN’s article goes on to bemoan the fact that these two are likely to be put to death soon by an Iraqi court.

The swift and brutal justice exposes the delicate line between the deterrent value of leaving foreign ISIS fighters in the hands of the legal system of the countries they sought to fragment, and the need for their home nations to be seen to prosecute their own extremists under the value system ISIS sought to undermine.

I actually see no conflict there at all. If you leave the shores of your country to go fight against it, killing and torturing along the way, it’s perfectly consistent that you’d then be tried in the area you chose to go. There is no moral obligation for western nations to repatriate these people and give them the chance to manipulate our justice systems. Where CNN see is a “delicate line,” I see a massive gulf that’s easy to distinguish.

The entire tenor of the CNN piece just rubs me the wrong way. Some people don’t deserve to be pitied. Not in this life at least. Terrorists are not going to suddenly change their ways because we start importing their counterparts back to western countries for trials. The deterrent is much stronger when they know they’ll be staring down an Iraqi judge who’s going to make his decision in ten minutes.

This pair should get nowhere near a western shore again. They should remain where they are and be put to death by the authorities of the country they chose to invade. Making a choice to join ISIS has consequences and they are about to learn that the hard way. We owe them nothing.

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