The family of US-Israeli journalist Steven Sotloff, who was beheaded by the Islamic State group, has sued Syria on grounds it provided material support to the jihadist organization.
In a suit filed Monday in US District Court in Washington, Sotloff’s parents and sister seek $90 million in damages from the government of President Bashar Assad.
It is not clear how the plaintiffs would collect the money if they win the case.
Sotloff, who was born in the US but lived and studied in Israel, entered Syria in August 2013 from Turkey and was abducted while traveling to the northern city of Aleppo. About a year later, he was beheaded and a video of the atrocity was released by the Islamic State group.
In this handout image made available by the photographer, American journalist Steven Sotloff, center with black helmet, talks to Libyan rebels on the Al Dafniya front line, about 15 miles from Misrata, Libya, June 2, 2011. Sotloff was beheaded in September 2014 nearly a year after being kidnapped in Syria. (Etienne de Malglaive via Getty Images/JTA)
The Sotloff lawsuit argues that Syria helped create and later assisted the Islamic State group as a “sham opponent” in the Syrian civil war, so as to bolster Assad’s negotiating power with Western powers that wanted him to resign.
The murder of journalists such as Sotloff helped Assad because it shifted Western attention away from getting rid of Assad to defeating the Islamic State group, with Assad as “a necessary ally,” the lawsuit states.
“Syria’s material support for Daesh caused the abduction and murder of Steven Sotloff,” the lawsuit says, using an acronym for the group that comes from its name in Arabic.
— AFP
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