Islamic State’s beheading of US hostage ‘an act of pure evil’, says Obama
US aid worker and Indiana native Peter Kassig, beheaded by Islamic State militants who captured him in Syria last year, was remembered on Sunday for his courageous devotion to helping people whose lives were upended by civil war.
US aid worker and Indiana native Peter Kassig, beheaded by Islamic State militants who captured him in Syria last year, was remembered on Sunday for his courageous devotion to helping people whose lives were upended by civil war.
President Barack Obama confirmed Kassig’s death after US government agencies authenticated a video posted online of a masked man standing over the decapitated head of the 26-year-old medic and former US Army Ranger.
Kassig “was taken from us in an act of pure evil by a terrorist group that the world rightly associates with inhumanity,” said the president, who offered his condolences to the relief worker’s family.
Earlier on Sunday, Kassig’s parents, Ed and Paula Kassig of Indiananapolis, had asked news organisations to refrain from distributing the video images, saying they wanted their “treasured son” to be remembered for his humanitarian work.
“We are aware of the news reports being circulated about our treasured son and are waiting for confirmation from the government as to the authenticity of these reports,” Kassig’s parents said.
They referred to him as Abdul-Rahman, the name he took upon completing his conversion to Islam after being taken hostage. According to his family, he was detained on October 1, last year, as he travelled for a relief project in an ambulance headed to the eastern Syrian city of Deir al-Zor.
