28 February 2023 , 20:22
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ISIS “Beatle” Alexanda Kotey is back behind bars, four months after going missing from jail.
The 39-year-old was taken from his cell in Pennsylvania, US, in November as part of a cooperation deal with the CIA, the Mirror understands.
Kotey’s disappearance sparked outrage among the families of those murdered by the ISIS terror group.
Relatives of British volunteers David Haines and Alan Henning, who were beheaded by the Beatles in Syria, were left in the dark, with US officials refusing to reveal why the convicted terrorist was no longer in prison.
A source told the Mirror: “Kotey is back where he belongs - behind bars.
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“For months, he was allowed out to help US intelligence.
“As part of his deal with prosecutors, he agreed to turn on his ISIS brothers and provide information intelligence agents hope will help them in the war on terrorism.
“Kotey was kept from his cell for so long as he knows so much. “He was sent back to his cell a few days ago.”
ISIS “Beatle” Alexander Kotey (ITV)The Mirror revealed in January how ‘Jihadi George’ had been missing from his cell at USP Canaan in Waymart, Pennsylvania, since last year.
It led to the families of his victims demanding answers from the Biden administration.
Haines’s daughter, 24, from Perth, Perthshire, said at the time: “I was made aware that Kotey had disappeared from the system, and it has been impossible to trace where he is.
“That doesn’t seem right because I don’t want to think that he has managed to negotiate his way into any kind of easy treatment on the basis of him assisting authorities or anything else.
“The last we heard, he was in a maximum security jail in Pennsylvania, which is renowned for violence, and I was fine with that because I don’t want to hear about him getting any easy time.
Bethany Haines, daughter of beheaded David Haines (Reach plc)“If he is attacked or suffers in any way which he is in jail, I am fine with that, given what he did to my father.
“I just don’t think it is right that he can just disappear from the system and the families whose lives were devastated by his actions are left to wonder where he is.”
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Bethany was forced to make urgent enquiries with US justice sources to get reassurance that he was still detained somewhere in the USA.
She added: “It seems that the British authorities don’t know anything and the US people are not telling them anything.”
The Beatles - made up of four Brits and nicknamed after the Fab Four by hostages because of their accents - are believed to have abducted and killed 27 people - targeting humanitarian aid workers.
They included David and Alan, who were abducted in 2013, and American Kayla Mueller and Peter Kassig. Kotey admitted his role in capturing hostages and said he worked in the terror group’s recruitment division, as a sniper and in ISIS’s “English media department”.
Alan Henning, who was abducted in 2013 and beheaded by the Beatles in Syria (PA)For helping the US with intelligence, the jihadist avoided being sent to America’s maximum security prison - instead being caged in Canaan, known as “one of the most dangerous penitentiaries in the country”.
Kotey, who accepted a plea deal that included “cooperation requirements”, was rewarded for his help by avoiding the ADX Florence known as the ‘Alcatraz of the Rockies’.
Originally from Paddington, London, Kotey was sentenced to life in April last year after he admitted to inflicting torture on hostages while in Syria.
It included waterboarding, mock executions, painful stress positions, food deprivation, beatings with sticks, chokeholds causing blackouts and electric shocks.
Kotey pleaded guilty to multiple charges, including conspiracy to commit hostage-taking resulting in death and conspiracy to murder.
He was captured in Syria by a Kurdish-backed militia in 2018, along with fellow Beatle El Shafee Elsheikh, 34, as they tried to flee to Turkey.
ISIS Beatle leader, Mohammed Emwazi, better known as Jihadi John, was killed in Syria in a US airstrike in 2015. Suspect Beatle, Aine Davis, alleged to be the so-called Beatle known to hostages as ‘Paul’, was jailed in Turkey in 2017 but is now awaiting trial in the UK.
Kotey’s pal Elsheikh was handed eight life sentences in August for his role in the Beatles and is now serving his sentence in a US maximum security prison.