UPDATE: Jordan carries out prisoner hangings in response to pilot execution
Beirut // ISIL has burnt alive a captured Jordanian pilot in the extremist group’s most brutal execution of a foreign hostage.
A video released online last night showed the pilot, Lt Maaz Al Kassasbeh, engulfed in flames inside a metal cage.
Jordanian authorities said Lt Al Kassasbeh had been killed a month ago, on January 3, before ISIL offered to free a Japanese journalist in return for the release of an Iraqi would-be suicide bomber held in Jordan.
The extremists did not include Lt Al Kassasbeh in the deal.
Jordan said yesterday that the failed female suicide bomber Sajida Al Rishawi, who is on death row, would be executed at dawn today. Five others were also to die.
US president Barack Obama denounced the murder.
“Should this video be authentic, it’s just one more indication of the viciousness and barbarity of this organisation,” he said.
Jordan’s King Abdullah cut short a visit to the US after the news broke, and the Jordanian army said it would avenge the death of Lt Al Kassasbeh, 26.
“The revenge will be as big as the calamity that has hit Jordan,” army spokesman Col Mamdouh Al Ameri said on television.
Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, Minister of Foreign Affairs, condemned the brutal slaying.
“This heinous and obscene act represents a brutal escalation by the terrorist group, whose evil objectives have become apparent,” Sheikh Abdullah said.
The air force first lieutenant was captured on December 24 after his F-16 jet crashed on a mission over northern Syria, as part of the US-led coalition campaign against ISIL.
The video released last night shows Lt Al Kassasbeh sitting at a table discussing coalition operations against ISIL, with flags from the various western and Arab countries in the alliance projected in the background.
It next shows him dressed in an orange jumpsuit surrounded by armed and masked ISIL fighters. He is then shown standing soaked in petrol inside a cage before a militant uses a torch to light a trail of flame running into the cage, burning him alive.
At a tribal meeting place where the pilot’s relatives have waited for weeks for word on his fate, chants against Jordan’s king erupted and family members wept.
An uncle shouted: “I received a phone call from the chief of staff saying ‘God bless his soul’.”
The pilot’s father, Safi Kassasbeh, was surrounded by family.
Lt Al Kassasbeh’s family had urged ISIL to release the recently married pilot, with his father pleading for mercy. His plane was the first lost since the coalition began strikes against ISIL last year.
On December 30, ISIL magazine Dabiq published an interview with Lt Al Kassasbeh. In it he spoke of being hit by a missile.
“I heard and felt it hit,” he said. “The other Jordanian pilot in the mission contacted me from a participating jet and told me that I was struck and that fire was coming out of the rear nozzle of my engine.”
The interview finishes with the question: “Do you know what the Islamic State will do with you?”.
The response was: “Yes. They will kill me.”
The video of the pilot’s killing came days after ISIL beheaded the second Japanese hostage within a week.
The extremist group had vowed to kill Kenji Goto on January 29 unless Amman handed over Al Rishawi, who was sentenced to death in Jordan for her role in a 2005 hotel attack in Amman that killed 60 people.
ISIL said in a video released online on Saturday that it had killed Goto, 47, after murdering the other Japanese hostage, Haruna Yukawa.
The group had initially demanded a US$200 million (Dh734.6m) ransom for the Japanese hostages – the same amount Tokyo had promised in non-military aid to countries affected by ISIL.
The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Bahrain are taking part in the coalition air strikes in Syria. Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France and the Netherlands are participating in Iraq.
The extremist group seized huge areas of territory in Iraq and Syria last year, declaring an Islamic caliphate and committing a wave of atrocities.
It had previously beheaded two US journalists, an American aid worker and two British aid workers in similar videos.
Jordan had vowed to do everything it could to save the pilot but had demanded proof that he was still alive before handing over Al Rishawi.
The extremists claimed to have shot down his plane, but both Jordan and the United States said it had crashed in an accident.
After the killing of Goto, the UN Security Council on Sunday condemned the “heinous and cowardly” murder, calling for “the immediate, safe and unconditional release of all those who are kept hostage” by the group.
* Agence France-Presse with additional reporting from Associated Press and Bloomberg News
UPDATE: Jordan carries out prisoner hangings in response to pilot execution
