A British man accused of belonging to the ‘Beatles,’ a cell of the Islamic State jihadist group specialising in the execution of Western hostages, was sentenced to eight years in prison by a London court on Monday.
Aine Davis, 39, had pleaded guilty at a hearing in mid-October to financing terrorist activities between 2013 and 2014 and possessing a firearm for terrorism-related purposes. Under British law, there was therefore no trial for Davis, who had initially pleaded not guilty to the same charges.
Davis has been held at the high-security Belmarsh prison since his deportation from Turkey and subsequent arrest in London in August 2022,
Active in Syria between 2012 and 2015, the four members of the ‘Beatles,’ who had grown up and become radicalised in London, were accused of overseeing the detention of at least 27 journalists and aid workers from Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, Spain, Sweden, the UK, and the USA.
Arrested in Turkey in November 2015, Davis, who denied belonging to the ‘Beatles,’ was sentenced there to seven and a half years in prison for terrorist offences, including participation in a banned organisation.
Once released, he was deported and directly arrested last August on arrival in London, where he had grown up and converted to Islam before moving to the Middle East.
At the hearing, which took place in mid-October, he appeared by videoconference from his cell in Belmarsh high security prison.
In 2014, his wife, with whom Davis had two children, had become the first person in the UK to be convicted of funding ISIS jihadists.
The nickname 'Beatles' had been given by Western hostages to this group of British-accented jihadists, who had gained sinister notoriety by staging the execution of captives in excruciating propaganda videos.
The group’s best-known member, Briton Mohamed Emwazi, aka 'Jihadi John,' was killed by an American drone strike in Syria in 2015.
Two other members of the group, El Shafee el-Sheikh and Alexanda Kotey were arrested by Syrian Kurdish forces in 2018. In 2022, they were sentenced to life imprisonment in the US for their role in the murder of four American journalists and aid workers.
