This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/07/world/middleeast/isis-claims-american-hostage-killed-by-jordanian-retaliation-bombings.html

The article has changed 15 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 8 Version 9
ISIS Claims U.S. Hostage, Kayla Mueller, Died in Jordanian Airstrikes ISIS Declares Airstrike Killed A U.S. Hostage
(about 3 hours later)
The Islamic State claimed Friday that the Jordanian bombings in northern Syria intended to avenge its immolation of a captured pilot had killed an American woman held hostage by the group. She had always been the unidentified, lone female American hostage of the Islamic State. For nearly 17 months, while her fellow American captives were beheaded one after another in serial executions posted on YouTube, Kayla Mueller’s name remained a closely guarded secret, whispered among reporters, government officials and hostage negotiators — all fearing that any public mention might imperil her life.
An Islamic State message published by the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks jihadist activity, said the American woman, Kayla Mueller, was killed when the building where she was being held in the Raqqa area collapsed in an airstrike. On Friday, the Islamic State confirmed her identity, announcing that Ms. Mueller, a 26-year-old aid worker from Prescott, Ariz., had been killed in the falling rubble of a building in northern Syria that it said had been struck by bombs from a Jordanian warplane. Both the Jordanian and American governments said there was no proof, even as they rushed to deplore her possible death. Top Jordanian officials said the announcement was cynical propaganda.
“The failed Jordanian aircraft killed an American female hostage,” said the message. “No mujahid was injured in the bombardment, and all praise is due to Allah.” Mujahid means fighter. But the group’s use of Ms. Mueller’s name for the first time prompted her family and its advisers to confirm her prolonged captivity in a statement and changed the calculus about what could be reported about her life. It threw a spotlight on a hostage ordeal that befell an eager and deeply idealistic young woman, who had ventured into one of the most dangerous parts of Syria — apparently without the backing of an aid organization, according to interviews with advisers to the family and employees of Doctors Without Borders, the international medical charity that hosted Ms. Mueller during her brief stay in one of Syria’s ravaged cities.
The group said the woman was killed by “fire of the shells dropped on the site.” Initially based in southern Turkey, where she had worked for at least two aid organizations assisting Syrian refugees, Ms. Mueller appears to have driven into the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Aug. 3, 2013, alongside a man who has been alternatively described as her Syrian friend or colleague, and by others as either her boyfriend or her fiancé. He had been invited to travel to the city to help fix the Internet connection for a compound run by the Spanish chapter of Doctors Without Borders, known in Spanish as Médicos Sin Fronteras, or M.S.F. Employees of the charity said they were surprised when the young Syrian man arrived with Ms. Mueller.
There was no immediate way to verify the claim by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. But it identified the hostage by name for the first time, and gave her address in Prescott, Ariz., apparently to add credibility to its message. The group also posted photographs of an obliterated house where, it said, Ms. Mueller's body had been buried beneath the rubble. “On Aug. 3, 2013, a technician sent by a company contracted by M.S.F. arrived at one of the organization’s structures in Aleppo, Syria to perform repairs. Unbeknown to the M.S.F. team, Kayla, a friend of the technician’s, was accompanying him,” said the group’s spokesman, Tim Shenk, in a statement.
The White House said American intelligence officials were investigating the claim. It took longer than expected to finish the repair work, and as night approached, M.S.F. agreed to let the two stay overnight, out of concern for their safety, said Mr. Shenk. The next day the charity arranged to transport them to an Aleppo bus stop, where they planned to catch a bus back to Turkey.
“We are obviously deeply concerned by these reports,” said Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council. “We have not at this time seen any evidence that corroborates ISIL’s claim.” They never made it. They were abducted on the road, the statement said.
Jordanian officials cast doubt on the Islamic State's claim, calling it propaganda, but they did not explicitly rule it out and confirmed that Jordanian warplanes had carried out airstrikes on Friday. Although Ms. Mueller had moved to Turkey in December 2012 to work with two organizations helping refugees — including the Danish Refugee Council — she was not employed by either of those groups when she entered Syria at a time when numerous foreigners already had been kidnapped inside the country, said the Mueller family advisers. What she was doing in Aleppo — beyond accompanying her Syrian companion — remains unclear.
Jordan's foreign minister, Nasser S. Judeh, said on his Twitter account that the claim was “An old and sick trick used by terrorists and despots for decades: claiming that hostages human shields held captive are killed by air raids.” Her companion, who was released after several months, declined to be interviewed.
The country's information minister, Mohamad Momani, said in an interview that Jordan was looking into the claim but regarded it skeptically. “There is a lot of murkiness about what she was doing there. That’s been the problem — no one really knows,” said one adviser of the Muellers.
“How could they identify Jordanian warplanes from a huge distance in the sky?” he said. “What was the America lady doing in a weapons warehouse?" In the statement released Friday, the family said that it had received the first message from Ms. Mueller’s captors in May 2014 — nine months after her disappearance. The Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, provided initial proof that she was alive, the family said.
The Islamic State, which occupies parts of Syria and Iraq, has executed three other American hostages, all men, in beheadings that it posted on the Internet. An American-led coalition that includes Jordan and other Arab allies of the United States has been bombing Islamic State targets on a frequent basis for months. Then on July 12, 2014, the Islamic State announced that it would kill her within 30 days unless the family provided a ransom of 5 million euros ($5.6 million), or exchanged her for Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani scientist educated in America who was convicted of trying to kill American soldiers and F.B.I. agents in Afghanistan in 2008. She is serving a sentence in a Texas jail, according to an email explaining the demands forwarded to The New York Times by an acquaintance of the Muellers. When the deadline passed, nothing happened, prompting the family to hope that Ms. Mueller might be spared.
Ms. Mueller, 26, the only known remaining American hostage held by the Islamic State, is a humanitarian aid worker who disappeared in August 2013 after she had driven into the northern Syria city of Aleppo with her Syrian boyfriend. Her parents received proof of life in May of the following year. During those 30 days, her parents shared their ordeal only with the tight-knit group of advisers and with parents of other American hostages held by the Islamic State. Together the anxious parents traveled to Washington to meet Obama administration officials to push for the release of their children. That was shortly before the United States began airstrikes against the Islamic State in concert with European and Arab allies. Soon after, in August, the Islamic State posted the first of its decapitation videos, starting with the beheading of the American James Foley, and then in quick succession the fellow Americans Steven J. Sotloff and Peter Kassig.
Her family had asked news organizations to avoid identifying her by name while she was still in captivity. But the Islamic State's use of her name and hometown in its message on Friday prompted the family to confirm the information, even though there was no proof she had been killed. A group of concerned advisers helping the Muellers dispatched negotiators to Turkey, Qatar, Lebanon and Iraq in an effort to find a way to contact the Islamic State to negotiate Ms. Mueller’s release. They spent many hours parsing messages by the Islamic State, trying to answer the crucial question: Would the group, which had shown no qualms about killing American male hostages, go so far as to behead a 26-year-old woman?
In a statement about Ms. Mueller, the family called her a passionate aid worker who had been taken captive by the Islamic State after she had left an Aleppo hospital run by Doctors Without Borders, the medical charity. They feared the worst after the Islamic State released a video on Tuesday showing the immolation of a captured Jordanian pilot, a killing that shocked the world and particularly infuriated Jordan. In retaliation, the Jordanians then executed two prisoners convicted of terrorism, including a Qaeda-linked woman who had tried to blow up a hotel in Amman.
“The common thread of Kayla's life has been her quiet leadership and strong desire to serve others," the statement said. The Jordanians then began their own extensive bombings of Islamic State targets in Syria.
Ms. Mueller, the statement said, had “devoted her career to helping those in need in countries around the world.” It was one of those attacks, the Islamic State said in its message Friday, that killed Ms. Mueller.
Experts on the Middle East said they believed Ms. Mueller was dead, since the Islamic State had no motivation to make such an assertion about a hostage if it were not true. Some also speculated that the Islamic State might have killed her beforehand and opportunistically blamed the Jordanian bombs for her death. Experts on the Middle East said they believed Ms. Mueller was dead, since the Islamic State had no motivation to make such an assertion about a hostage if it were not true. Some also speculated that the Islamic State might have killed her beforehand and taken the opportunity to blame the Jordanian bombs in her death.
Andrew J. Tabler, senior fellow at the Program on Arab Politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said it was possible the militants “simply wanted to drive a wedge between regional and Western members of the coalition.”Andrew J. Tabler, senior fellow at the Program on Arab Politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said it was possible the militants “simply wanted to drive a wedge between regional and Western members of the coalition.”
The immolation death of the Jordanian pilot, First Lt. Moaz al-Kasasbeh, 26, which was posted on the Internet in a carefully produced Islamic State video on Tuesday, generated new levels of world outrage. Ms. Mueller, who was born in 1988, had a deep desire to help those less fortunate. After graduating from Northern Arizona University, she worked for aid organizations in India, Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territories, according to statement from her family. In 2012, she was drawn to what would soon become the world’s top humanitarian crisis, the Syrian civil war. She moved to Turkey, where many Syrians were seeking refuge, and she settled in a border town assisting Syrian families for the Danish Refugee Council and an aid group called Support to Life.
It was never made clear when the pilot, who was captured in late December, had been killed. But Jordanian officials said after the video was released that they believed the militants killed him in early January, and had lied that he was alive during negotiations aimed at freeing him. “The common thread of Kayla’s life has been her quiet leadership and strong desire to serve others,” her family said in the statement.
Jordan hung two convicted terrorist prisoners, including a woman, in retaliation on Wednesday and launched bombing attacks on Islamic State targets in neighboring Syria as a further response for vengeance. The family advisers said there was not any indication that she had been working with an aid group when she went to Aleppo. She had no professional connection to the M.S.F. compound, said Carlos Francisco Cabello, the current head of the Spanish division of Doctors Without Borders.
A senior United States military official with knowledge of the targets attacked by the Jordanians said the targets in and around Raqqa that were struck were carefully vetted and scrutinized, as with previous strikes, and there were no indications in advance that any hostages were located at the facilities. “She appeared there with the external technician in a war zone. We didn’t know that she was coming, or otherwise we would not allow her to visit,” Mr. Cabello said, speaking by telephone from Turkey. “U.S. and U.K. citizens at that moment, and even now, were not considered for the Syrian mission for M.S.F. for obvious security reasons,” he said.
“The same high standards we apply to all targets in the vetting stage were applied to these,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military operations. “If there’s any inkling a person like that was there, we don’t go there.” “She was never employed by M.S.F.-Spain in Syria. This must be clear,” he said, adding, “Aleppo at that time and now is a war zone.”
The official cautioned that without proof of the American hostage’s death, the statement by the Islamic State could be a ploy to cause the Jordanians and the rest of the American-led coalition to refrain from any heavier airstrikes. In an interview with The Daily Courier in Arizona, Ms. Mueller described how fulfilled she felt by her work with refugees, which included leading art classes for displaced Syrian children.
The official said though the Jordanian fighter jets took the lead in the strike in and around Raqqa, they were accompanied by American aircraft, as is standard on bombing runs over territory held by the Islamic State in Syria. “For as long as I live, I will not let this suffering be normal,” she said.