By Kate Holton and Raheem Salman
LONDON/BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A British Muslim leader
called for action on Thursday to tackle a jihadi sub-culture after an
Islamic State video showed a suspected Briton beheading U.S. journalist
James Foley, held hostage in Syria.
In Washington, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the threat from
Islamic State was "beyond anything we've seen" and the U.S. Justice
Department opened a criminal investigation into the death of Foley on
the video, which featured a masked man speaking English with a British
accent.
As Western officials tried to identify the man, the Muslim Council
of Britain denounced Foley's "abhorrent murder" and one of its advisers
urged anyone who knows the killer's identity to contact the police.
Horror at the video spanned from the West to Baghdad, where Iraqis
asked why the United States and its allies had not cracked down on
Islamic State fighters long before they captured large areas of Syria
and Iraq.
Foley, 40, was beheaded by an Islamic State militant in
the video that surfaced on the Internet on Tuesday, and officials in
Washington revealed that U.S. special forces had tried unsuccessfully to
rescue him along with other American hostages earlier this summer.
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The wreckage of a car belonging to Islamic State militants lies beside a tree after it was targeted …
A firefight between the U.S. forces and Islamic State
militants during the rescue attempt appeared to be the first direct
ground engagement between the two sides.
The video caused
particular shock in Britain, which is home to about 2.7 million Muslims,
although the hundreds of British men fighting alongside the militants
in Iraq and Syria have created concern for some time.
Iqbal Sacranie, an adviser to the Muslim Council of Britain, said
Britons from across the country's communities had to stop young men
being seduced by radical ideologies.
"This sub culture of this
'jihadi-cool' - as they call it in the media - within the margins of
society ... that is the real challenge," he told BBC Radio. "This is a
problem that affects all of us and it will only be dealt with more
effectively if all of us are working together on this."
Sacranie
said the Muslim community was pushing the message that "this is totally
alien to Islam" and families were reporting to the authorities when they
discovered their sons had headed to the Middle East to fight. He also
told London's Evening Standard newspaper that anyone who recognized the
man in the video had a duty to contact police.
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A peshmerga fighter stands guard at Mosul Dam in northern Iraq August 21, 2014. REUTERS/Youssef Boud …
JOHN, PAUL AND RINGO
The Guardian newspaper said a
former hostage had identified the masked man as the leader of three
Britons who guarded foreign hostages in the city of Raqqa - Islamic
State's stronghold in eastern Syria.
The BBC also reported that
hostages had nicknamed their three captors John, Paul and Ringo, after
members of the Beatles pop group.
Ghaffar Hussain, managing director of the counter-extremism Quilliam
Foundation, said it was almost inevitable that men who had fought in
Syria would return to plan attacks in Europe.
"It is disturbing
that people born and raised in Britain and who have gone to the same
schools as us could have been essentially indoctrinated to the extent
where they can justify raping women and chopping heads off," he said.
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A Peshmerga fighter is seen in a vehicle as he guards Mosul Dam in northern Iraq August 21, 2014. RE …
Four British Islamists - two of whom had been to al Qaeda
training camps in Pakistan - killed 52 people in suicide bomb attacks on
London in July 2005, and Britons have previously appeared in graphic
Islamist videos.
Until recently, Islamic State concentrated on establishing its
self-proclaimed caliphate in areas of Syria and Iraq it had seized
rather than on attacking the West, like al Qaeda - the group from which
it split.
But U.S. President Barack Obama's decision to order
air strikes on its fighters in Iraq appears to have changed this. The
beheading video also showed images of another U.S. journalist, Steven
Sotloff, whose fate the group said depends on how the United States acts
in Iraq. "The life of this American citizen, Obama, depends on your
next decision," the masked man says.
In a Washington briefing on
Thursday, Hagel said Islamic State was as sophisticated as any group the
United States had seen and posed an imminent threat "to every interest
we have, whether it's in Iraq or anywhere else."
"They are beyond just a terrorist group. They marry ideology, a
sophistication of ... military prowess," Hagel said. "They are
tremendously well-funded. This is beyond anything we've seen."
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Peshmerga fighters pose for photographs at Mosul Dam in northern Iraq August 21, 2014. REUTERS/Youss …
General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of
Staff, suggested Islamic State would be a danger until it could no
longer count on safe havens in Syria.
"This is an organization
that has an apocalyptic, end-of- days strategic vision and which will
eventually have to be defeated," Dempsey said.
"To your question, can they be defeated without addressing that part
of their organization which resides in Syria? The answer is no. That
will have to be addressed on both sides of what is essentially at this
point a non-existent border."
In Baghdad, Iraqis expressed their
horror at the video of Foley's killing and questioned Western strategy
on Islamic State, which advanced out of Syria in June to capture several
major Iraqi cities, including Mosul, before the United States
intervened militarily.
"The killing is the crime of all crimes,
whoever the victim is," said Kareem Jamal, 55, an Arabic language
teacher at a secondary school.
"I wish the world superpowers had
fought these criminal groups in their incubators. The U.S. should have
hit Islamic State when they first appeared in Syria. Why didn’t they hit
them when they first entered Mosul and other cities?"
Ali Mohammed Saeed, a 35-year-old doctor, called for deeper Western
involvement, almost three years after U.S. troops pulled out of Iraq.
"Air strikes are not enough, those criminals need ground troops to kill
them and kick them out."
British Prime Minister David Cameron
has ruled out sending troops to step up Britain's military involvement
in Iraq, which has so far been focused on delivering supplies to Kurdish
forces fighting Islamic State and using jets to conduct surveillance.
(Additional reporting by Julia Edwards, Missy Ryan, Steve Holland and
David Alexander in Washington and William James in London; Writing by
David Stamp; editing by Philippa Fletcher and Gunna Dickson)
