“You are going to go through an ordeal,” a lawyer for British Islamic State Beatle El Shafee Elsheikh warned the jury at the start of his terrorism trial in Virginia last month.
What followed was a fortnight of some of the most harrowing testimony imaginable.
The 12 jurors at the Alexandria federal court were made to listen to audio recordings of the so-called Beatles’ victims pleading for their lives. They watched their subsequent execution videos, and looked at photographs of decapitated heads triumphantly displayed on spikes.
