ISIS Militant Sentenced to Life for Role in Burning Pilot Alive
A panel of judges in the Stockholm District Court found Osama Krayem, a 32-year-old Swedish citizen, guilty of a 'grave war crime' and a terrorist offense. Though Mr. Krayem denied any wrongdoing, video evidence showed him participating in the gruesome murder of the pilot, whose immolation in 2015 caused a wave of outrage over the Islamic State's treatment of prisoners.
Mr. Krayem was one of thousands of young men who fought for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, when the group controlled large swaths of eastern Syria and northern Iraq. He was also among a group of fighters who later fanned out over Europe, carrying out deadly terrorist attacks in France and Belgium, according to investigators in those countries.
The Swedish court found that Mr. Krayem was one of several armed and uniformed militants in Syria who forced the captured pilot, First Lt. Moaz al-Kasasbeh, into a metal cage in 2015 and burned him alive, videotaping the atrocity and posting it online. Lieutenant al-Kasasbeh had been shot down over Syria while carrying out airstrikes for a coalition of Arab nations.
Mr. Krayem may not have lit the fire but he contributed 'so actively' to the murder that he was tried as a perpetrator, the presiding judge, Anna Liljenberg Gullesjo, said in a statement.
'The evidence has shown that the defendant was at the execution site, uniformed and armed, and let himself be filmed,' the judge said.
Besides finding Mr. Krayem guilty of a war crime, the court determined that the filming of the pilot's murder and the distribution of the video were an act of terror, intended to intimidate anyone who did not share the Islamic State's ideology, and to deter other countries from acting against the group.
Mr. Krayem, also known as Naim al Hamed, had already been linked to terror attacks that shook Western Europe. In 2022, he was among 20 men convicted for their roles in a spree of bombings and shootings in Paris in 2015 that left 130 people dead. He was later found guilty, along with eight others, of orchestrating a series of deadly bombings in Belgium in 2016.
French prosecutors had extradited Mr. Krayem to Sweden for his trial in Stockholm. He will be returned to France before Dec. 27 to continue serving his sentence there.
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