Steven Sotloff
ستيفن سوتلوف
Biography
Steven Sotloff was an American freelance journalist and graduate of the University of Central Florida who reported from across the Middle East and North Africa, including Syria, Egypt, Libya, and Turkey. He wrote for Time magazine, Foreign Policy, and other publications. He was captured by ISIS in August 2013 while reporting near Aleppo. After being held for over a year, he was beheaded by ISIS on September 2, 2014 — two weeks after James Foley — in a video titled 'A Second Message to America.' Sotloff also held Israeli citizenship, a fact he and fellow captives kept secret from their ISIS captors for fear of what might happen if discovered. His mother Shirley made a famous direct appeal to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a video, calling on him to spare her son's life. The appeal came too late — Sotloff had already been killed before the video was released.