The U.S. claims that the Islamic State killed its hostage Kayla Jean Mueller. But the sequence of events and the surrounding circumstance point to her being killed, willful or not, by an U.S. ally and based on U.S. intelligence.
Last Thursday the Jordanian air-force attacked targets U.S. intelligence associated with the Islamic State in Raqqa. The next day the Islamic State said that a hostage, a U.S. citizen, was killed in the attack:
The terrorist group claimed Kayla Jean Mueller was killed by Jordanian aircraft rockets that a struck the building in which she was being held.
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"[..] we can confirm the death of an American hostage by the rockets which targeted that area."The group released images showing a damaged building it said had been targeted in air strikes, but no photos of the hostage.
Jordanian fighter jets bombed Islamic State sites on Thursday, after the militants burned to death a captured Jordanian pilot.
The White House, State Department and Pentagon said they could not confirm the unsubstantiated report.
How are official statements after a confirmed attack with pictures of the destroyed location "unsubstantiated"?
Over the weekend the Islamic State sent pictures of the dead body of the hostage to her family. The family acknowledged and the FBI confirmed that the hostage is dead:
The U.S. government has confirmed that Kayla Mueller, a 26-year-old American woman held hostage by the Islamic State in Syria, was killed, reaching that conclusion after the group sent pictures of her body to her family.
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The information available to intelligence officials, [White House press secretary Josh] Earnest said, “did not allow them to arrive at a conclusion about her precise cause of death” or when it occurred. He and other U.S. officials said they would not provide details of the pictures her family received, “out of respect for the family.”
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U.S. officials have expressed strong skepticism that she was killed in an airstrike. Earnest repeated earlier Jordanian statements that the target hit in the Friday strike by the Jordanian air force — a building that militants showed in photographs posted online at the time they announced Mueller’s death — was a “weapons compound” near Raqqa that had also been hit in earlier strikes.“The information that we have, because this airstrike was coordinated with the United States military, is that there was no evidence of civilians in the target area prior to the coalition airstrike taking place,” Earnest said.
Absence of evidence of civilians being there does not mean absence of civilians. So was this like one of the usual "wedding bombed" U.S. intelligence screw ups?
The Islamic State has killed other foreign hostages in propaganda stunts. It distributed high quality videos of the ritual killings. If the Islamic State killed Miss Mueller why did it not use the killing for another propaganda snuff movie?
The path of action – air-strike by Jordan – IS claim of her death – photos of the hit building – photos of the dead hostage – are all consistent with the hostage dying in the air attack. There is no information that allows a different conclusion and, as the White House spokesperson claims, there is no certainty about the cause of her death. That at least tells us that she was not beheaded.
How then can the Pentagon claim, with no evidence supporting it, that the Islamic State killed the hostage?
The Pentagon says American hostage Kayla Jean Mueller died at the hands of Islamic State and not in a Jordanian airstrike targeting the militant group.
Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby was asked Tuesday if there was any doubt who killed the aid worker.
He replied: “No doubt. ISIL,” using the initials the group is known by.
Kirby says U.S. officials still don’t know how Mueller died. But he added that officials are certain it was not in one of the airstrikes Jordan launched in retaliation for the killing of one of its pilots.
"We don't know how she died but it wasn't us" is quite weak in my view. I do not believe this indeed "unsubstantiated" claim of the Pentagon.
It is highly likely that the hostage, as the Islamic State consistently claims, was killed in the Jordanian air-strike which was based on U.S. intelligence of Islamic State compounds in Raqqa. The willful killing of a hostage taken by an enemy, to avoid negotiations and blackmailing, is not unheard of. Whether this attack was planned and executed with the knowledge of the hostage being there or without such knowledge can not (yet) be concluded.