The sibling of a Jordanian pilot who was burned to death in Syria by the Islamic State has come forward to share that he had begged the air force to bomb the house where his brother was being kept to prevent him from suffering a horrendous death at the hands of the terrorist group.
The brutal killing took place sometime in late 2014 or early 2015 and sparked outrage internationally.
Osama Krayem, a 32-year-old Swede currently serving lengthy prison terms for his involvement in the 2015 and 2016 attacks in Paris and Brussels, is facing trial in Stockholm on charges of war crimes and terrorism related to his participation in the pilot’s murder.
On December 24, 2014, an aircraft belonging to the Royal Jordanian Air Force crashed in Syria.
The pilot, Maaz al-Kassasbeh, was seized by ISIS militants near Raqqa and was subsequently burned alive in a cage prior to February 3, 2015, when a video depicting his brutal death was released, as stated by the prosecution.
On Wednesday, Jawdat al-Kassasbeh, the brother of the pilot told the Stockholm district court of the physical and psychological trauma the family has suffered since the killing.
He said he learned of his brother’s capture through a relative who worked at Jordan’s foreign ministry and immediately went to the air force headquarters.
‘There, I see that the head of the air force and the operations teams are having a meeting on the subject… There were large screens showing images of Syria,’ he testified.
The brother of a Jordanian pilot burned alive in Syria by the Islamic State revealed he asked the air force to bomb the house his brother was locked up in so he wouldn’t be tortured by ISIS
The brutal killing took place sometime in late 2014 or ealy 2015 and sparked outrage internationally.
Osama Krayem, a 32-year-old Swede already serving long prison sentences for his role in the Paris and Brussels attacks in 2015 and 2016, is on trial in Stockholm suspected of war crimes and terrorist crimes for his role in the pilot’s killing
‘He told me: ‘I think he’s in this house’,’ he said.
‘Psychologically, I was not doing well at that moment. So I told the head of the air force that … I thought (ISIS fighters) would kill him in a horrible way. I asked if it would be possible to bomb the house so he could be spared an atrocious death,’ he added.
The Swedish investigation describes the al-Kassasbeh family as having close ties to Jordan’s royal family and military.
Jawdat al-Kassasbeh said he later learned of his brother’s death on television.
‘It was a shock. I watched the whole video but in bits. I couldn’t watch the entire video until 2021,’ he said.
When his mother learned of the execution, ‘she had to be hospitalised immediately’.
His eldest sister ‘developed diabetes’, while their father ‘contracted chronic illnesses, hypertension and is in poor psychological condition, he cries regularly,’ al-Kassasbeh said.
Jihadist Krayem could be the first person to be convicted in connection with the heinous killing of Maaz al-Kassasbeh.
Prosecutors have said the killing was considered ‘one of the most brutal murders committed by [ISIS] during the war in Syria’.
The pilot’s wife Anwar Tarawneh, holds a photo of him before his grotesque execution was confirmed
The killing of the pilot violates the laws of war, and the killing and video constitute terrorist activities, the Swedish Prosecution Authority said in a statement.
Under Swedish legislation, courts can try people for crimes against international law committed abroad.
The ISIS militant group once imposed a reign of terror over millions of people in Syria and Iraq, controlling swathes of the countries between 2014 and 2017 before it was defeated in its last bastions in 2019.
It is responsible for some of Europe’s worst terror atrocities in recent years.
Krayem, who is from Malmo in southern Sweden, joined ISIS in Syria in 2014 before returning to Europe.
In June 2022, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison in France for assisting in the planning of the 2015 Paris attacks, in which 130 people died.
The following year, he was given a life sentence in Belgium for participating in the bombings on March 22, 2016, at Brussels’ main airport and on the metro system, which killed 32 people.
Prior to his arrest on April 8, 2016, he was one of Europe’s most wanted fugitives, and considered to be a hardened ISIS operative.
