A journalist, James Foley, who was taken captive and murdered by the notorious ISIS executioner “Jihadi John,” reportedly uttered poignant final words before his tragic demise. Foley vanished on November 22, 2012, in the northwest region of Syria close to the Turkish border after being forcibly loaded into a vehicle by ISIS militants. At the time of his abduction, Foley was employed by the online American news platform GlobalPost. Two years later, ISIS released a video showing Foley kneeling beside an individual clad in black attire. He was coerced to deliver a scripted message blaming the US as the “true killer” before being brutally beheaded. Just prior to his execution, Foley conversed with British photojournalist John Cantlie.
Reportedly, Foley remarked to Cantlie, “Great, captured on Thanksgiving Day, killed on my mom’s birthday.” Cantlie’s words were published in ISIS’ propaganda magazine Dabiq and likely composed under duress. In 2017, there were reports suggesting that Foley had perished in an airstrike in Mosul.
Following James’ tragic death, former US President Barack Obama expressed deep dismay, stating, “The entire world is appalled. No just God would stand for what they did yesterday or every single day. People like this ultimately fail. They fail because the future’s won by those who build and not destroy. The world is shaped by people like Jim Foley.”
Subsequent to the video release, American forces conducted 14 airstrikes targeting ISIS operatives near the Mosul dam in northern Iraq. Jihadi John, Foley’s assailant whose real name was Mohammed Emwazi and a native of London, along with three other British individuals known as the ISIS Beatles, met his demise in a drone strike in 2015 in Raqqa after being traced to a kebab shop. A defense source disclosed, “We’d been monitoring Emwazi six weeks and identified a pattern in which he’d visit a building near his mosque. The team asked MI6 about the building and it came back that it was a kebab shop. One day he walked out of the kebab shop there and the boy ran off to play football. It was our chance.”
In 2022, Diane Foley, James’ mother, confronted one of the individuals involved in her son’s murder. Alexanda Kotey, also known as Jihadi George, is currently serving a life sentence at the ADX Florence supermax prison in Colorado. Diane, dedicated to hostage liberation efforts since her son’s tragic passing, engaged in a four-hour meeting with Kotey. She expressed her desire for Kotey to comprehend the devastation he caused, highlighting the nobility of individuals like James who sought to report the truth from Syria because of their care and dedication. Reflecting on the encounter, Diane shared, “He said he had been praying to his God for forgiveness. He shared a picture of his family, he has some young children whom he will probably never see again. It made me realize how much he’s lost by following hatred and propaganda. It made me pity him.”