American Aid Worker Beheaded in Act of ‘Pure Evil’

Peter Kassig stands in front of a truck filled with supplies for Syrian refugees in an undated photograph provided by the Kassig family

Islamic State extremists beheaded an American aid worker in “an act of pure evil,” President Barack Obama said in a statement.

A video showing the severed head of Peter Kassig, who converted to Islam during captivity and took the name Abdul Rahman, was distributed today by the Sunni militant group, which occupies large portions of northwestern Iraq and eastern Syria.

Such actions “represent no faith, least of all the Muslim faith which Abdul-Rahman adopted as his own,” Obama said in a statement issued from Air Force One as he returned to the U.S. from a week-long trip to Asia.

Kassig is the sixth foreign captive executed by Islamic State and its sympathizers after the jihadist group declared a caliphate on territory it seized in Iraq and Syria.

The al-Qaeda breakaway group has also executed hundreds of its foes in the two countries. The group executed 13 people in the northern Syrian town of Tabaqa, the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement.

After beheading British hostage Alan Henning, a 47-year-old working for a charity delivering aid to Syria, the Sunni Muslim militants said last month that Kassig would be next. In the video released today, a masked man accuses Obama of lying about the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Unlike previous execution videos, the victim wasn’t shown making a statement prior to his death.

Former Soldier

Kassig, a former U.S. Army Ranger who served in Iraq, became interested in humanitarian relief work when he visited Beirut, Lebanon, as a student at Butler University in Indianapolis, according to an interview in Time magazine last year.

He began volunteering as a trauma medic for Syrian refugees in a Lebanese hospital and then created his own relief organization called SERA, or Special Emergency Response and Assistance, he said in the interview. The grassroots group, which worked in tandem with larger aid organizations, was focused on providing food, medical supplies and clothing to those in need, he said.

“These were the selfless acts of an individual who cared deeply about the plight of the Syrian people,” Obama said.

Kassig was captured while traveling in Syria in October 2013.

“I certainly plan on continuing to try and serve those who are in need for as long as I live,” Kassig said in the Time interview.

Reprisal Killings

Islamic State and its supporters have executed citizens of the U.K., France and the U.S., including two American journalists, James Foley and Steven Sotloff, British aid worker David Haines, and French tourist Herve Gourdel. They have called the killings reprisals for the armed campaign against them. The beheadings helped trigger the formation of a U.S.-led coalition that’s helping Kurdish and Iraqi government forces combat the extremist group.

The video includes a short account of what Islamic State describes as the fight against U.S. “crusader” forces and Shiite proxies since the U.S. toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in 2003. It shows images and footage of successive al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq, including Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, who was killed in an airstrike in 2006.

To contact the reporters on this story: Glen Carey in Riyadh at gcarey8@bloomberg.net; David Lerman in Washington at dlerman1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alaa Shahine at asalha@bloomberg.net Maura Reynolds, Gail DeGeorge