THE brother of a pilot who was tragically burned alive in Syria by ISIS recounted how he pleaded with air forces to strike the jail in order to save his brother from enduring such a cruel fate.
During his testimony at the Stockholm district court on Wednesday, Jawdat al-Kassasbeh shared the distress and agony he and his family have faced since the brutal killing of his brother, Maaz al-Kassasbeh.
Maaz, a pilot with the Royal Jordanian Air Force, was downed over Raqqa, Syria, in December 2014. Not long after, ISIS disseminated a video showing al-Kassasbeh being burned alive inside a cage.
Osama Krayem, a 32-year-old Swede already serving long prison sentences for his role in the Paris and Brussels attacks in 2015 and 2016, is on trial for his role in the pilot’s killing.
The slain pilot’s brother told the court of the physical and psychological trauma he and his family have suffered since his sibling’s death.
He said he learned of his capture through a relative who worked at Jordan’s foreign ministry and immediately headed to the air force headquarters.
He said: “There, I see that the head of the air force and the operations teams are having a meeting on the subject… There were large screens showing images of Syria. He told me: ‘I think he’s in this house’,
“Psychologically, I was not doing well at that moment. So I told the head of the air force that … I thought (IS fighters) would kill him in a horrible way.
“I asked if it would be possible to bomb the house so he could be spared an atrocious death,” he added.
Jawdat later found out about his brother’s death on TV.
He said: “It was a shock. I watched the whole video but in bits. I couldn’t watch the entire video until 2021.”
He added that the cruel nature in which his brother was killed took a massive toll on the whole family, in particular his mother who had to be hospitalised.
Jawdat also puts his sister’s diabetes down to his brother’s torturous death, as well as his dad’s hypertension and poor mental health.
The court hearing comes as another ISIS leader believed to have also been involved in burning the Jordanian pilot to death was captured.
Syrian national Saddam al-Jamal was captured in Iraq after being lured from Syria by intelligence officers using the phone of Ismail al-Ethawi, an ISIS lieutenant captured in February.
Tipped as a future leader of the terrorist organisation, al-Jamal was known for his brutality.
Jordanian authorities accused him of also being behind the brutal execution of downed pilot.
A former commander in the Free Syrian Army which fought against President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, al-Jamal had also taken part in multiple atrocities including a 2014 massacre in Deir Ezzor, Syria, in which 700 members of a tribe opposed to ISIS were killed.
He also ordered the execution of children, sometimes in front of their parents.
Al-Ethawi, who was captured in February, was a top aide to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Intelligence officers used his account on Telegram, a social media app favoured by terror organisations because it encrypts messages, to lure the other four high-ranking leaders out of Syria. The five of them were on a group chat together.
Iraqi security adviser Hisham al Hashemi told The Telegraph that Iraqi troops were surprised to see the four senior senior jihadists travel on motorcycles, having expecting them to arrive in a motorcade.
Al-Hashemi also said that American troops also took part in the operation.
ISIS field commanders Mohamed al-Qadeer, Issam Abdel Kader al-Zawba’i and Omar Shehab El-Karboul were also captured in the sting, which has been praised by Donald Trump.
“Five Most Wanted leaders of ISIS just captured,” the US president posted on Twitter last week.
