FBI believes it’s identified militant who beheaded Americans

The FBI believes it has identified the masked Islamic State militant who appeared in the videotaped beheadings of two American journalists, bureau Director James B. Comey told reporters Thursday.

The militant group sparked international outrage when it released videos of a man dressed in black with a British accent taunting President Obama and putting a knife to the throat of James Foley, and later, Steven Sotloff, reporters who were abducted while covering the civil war in Syria.

“Yes, I believe we have” identified the masked militant, Comey said, but he did not elaborate. The FBI has declined to say who is the leading suspect in its investigation of the killings.

In the days after the video of Foley’s death was released, British Prime Minister David Cameron told the BBC that it was “extremely likely” that the killer was a British citizen.

Some reports have speculated that the swaggering assailant in the video is a 24-year-old British rapper named Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, but U.S. officials have expressed doubt about his involvement.

Bary’s father, Adel Abdel Bary, is a longtime Egyptian militant with ties to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The elder Bary pleaded guilty last week in federal court in New York to three charges dealing with threats to kill, injure or intimidate people and damage and destroy property, and admitted links to the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa.

After the video of Foley’s beheading surfaced Aug. 19, the U.S. military stepped up its bombardment of Islamic State targets in Iraq, although there was no indication the additional airstrikes were directly related to the journalist’s death.

This week, the U.S.-led campaign against the group expanded into Syria, hitting Islamic State positions as well as targeting members of a small group of senior Al Qaeda fighters known as the Khorasan Group, which has been tasked with attacking the West.

Given its unique focus on recruiting Western passport holders to plot mayhem back home, the Khorasan Group posed a threat, Comey said. But he said he was unsure how close the group’s members were to pulling off an attack.

The FBI estimates that 12 Americans are fighting with terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria, along with hundreds of passport holders from Western European countries, Comey said Thursday. Counter-terrorism officials are concerned that American or European fighters will try to board airplanes undetected or enter their home countries to launch attacks.

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