According to the FBI he speaks with a “North American accent.” Note: Video below does not show the execution.
Via CNN:
The FBI on Tuesday asked for the public’s help in identifying an English-speaking militant who appeared to help execute Syrian soldiers in an ISIS recruitment video released last month.
In the 55-minute video titled “Flames of War,” the jihadist switches from classical Arabic to perfect English with a North American accent, and appears to orchestrate a mass execution of Syrian soldiers.
The FBI reached out to the public on its website Tuesday, posting a portion of the video and asking whether anyone has information about the jihadist’s identity. […]
Officials see the killer’s appearance in the video as significant because he comes across, they say, as articulate and persuasive, a person of influence within the terror group.
In the video, there are a number of men digging a ditch behind him. The jihadist, whose face is covered except for his eyes, claims they are Syrian soldiers assigned to a 17th Division military base near the Syrian city of Raqqa, and who, after an ISIS attack, were “digging their own graves in the very place where they were stationed.”
CNN cannot independently verify that the men in the video were soldiers, as the propaganda video claims.
The video then shows the speaker and a group of militants executing the men, who fall into the ditch.
The man who led this atrocity on film could be an Arab who was educated in the West. Or he could be an American or Canadian. If so, CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank said, he would be the first North American jihadist to commit a war crime on camera.“Clearly ISIS had a calculated step to be able to put this guy on camera,” said Frank Cilluffo, a security analyst at George Washington University. “Why? Because he seems American. The message is aimed at a Western audience.”