STILL ALIVE: ISIS THREATENS TO KILL AMERICAN JOURNALIST STEVEN JOEL SOTLOFF NEXT
Next? Soltoff has been missing since August 2013, when he disappeared while reporting near Aleppo
At the end of the disturbing video, the masked ISIS operative issues a threat to kill another American journalist held captive if President Obama continues to order attacks against the group invading Iraq.
Freelance journalist Steven Joel Sotloff is paraded in front of the camera, and held by the collar of his shirt as the operatives says: 'The life of this American citizen, Obama, depends on your next decision'.
Sotloff has been missing since August 2013, when he was kidnapped near Aleppo, Syria.
He sent out his last tweet on August 3, talking about his hometown basketball team the Miami Heat.
According to his account, he was living in Benghazi, Libya at the time.
ABC News foreign editor Jon Williams tweeted today that Sotloff's family were previously advised not to go public with news of his disappearance.
But a family friend wrote about Sotloff last December, saying he went missing August 4 and to pray for his return.
Sotloff, a graduate of the University of Central Florida, had been published in TIME, World Affairs, National Interest and the Christian Science Monitor.
The last story he filed was on November 26, 2012 titled 'Libya's New Crisis'
'Steve Sotloff lived in Yemen for years, spoke good Arabic, deeply loved the Islamic world..for this he is threatened with beheading,' friend Anne Marloe tweeted on Tuesday, following the video's release.
In the video, Sotloff did not speak, and appeared with a shaved head and face.
Steven Sotloff's former roommate at the University of Central Florida, Emerson Lotzia, was horrified that his friend's life was in grave danger.
'Everyone is scared right now,' admitted Emerson, who works as a sports reporter at West Palm Beach tv station WPTV., to MailOnline.
'No one really knows what to think because we never really thought that we would ever have one of our friends in this situation.'
Then and now: Sotloff is pictured in a contributor photo for a 2011 Daily Caller photo on the left, compared to the man identified as Sotloff in the beheading video on the right
Sotloff has been missing since the middle of 2013 and last tweeted on August 3rd, 2013 about his hometown basketball team the Miami Heat.
According to his Twitter account he was in Libya at the time of his disappearance.
Steven Sotloff’s parents and family are having a hard time coming to terms with the release of the video, a relative told Mail Online.
'How could we be doing?' Steven’s aunt, Rhona Forgang, said from her Pennsylvania home on Wednesday.
Mrs Forgang, whose brother is Steven Sotloff’s father Arthur, added that for more than a year the family had been advised to remain silent about his disappearance and whether Steven’s captives had been in touch with them.
The public release by ISIS of the gruesome video does not appear to have changed that. 'We’ve been told to say nothing at all,' she said today.
Steven Sotloff’s grandparents are Holocaust survivors, according to his mother’s biography on the website of a Jewish pre-school in Miami, where she works as a teacher.
Both her children, Steven, now 31, and his sister Lauren, 28, attended the Temple Beth-Am School in Pinecrest.
'We’ve been praying for them and that’s all we can say,' said a woman who answered the phone at the school this morning.
0 comments:
Post a Comment