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03/29/2024 06:37:19 am

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FBI: Masked Militant In Beheading Videos Identified

James Comey

(Photo : REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque) FBI Director James Comey testifies at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on "Oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation" on Capitol Hill in Washington May 21, 2014.

United States Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey said on Thursday that he believes they have identified the masked man in the videos of the beheading of two Americans. However, Comey declined to name the man.

The FBI said they were able to identify the British-accented militant using means aside from voice analysis applied on the videos purporting the beheading of James Foley in August and Steven Sotloff in September.

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Investigators said the actual murders could have been carried out by another militant, citing the videos' editing, which cut the actual beheadings. The videos only showed the beheaded bodies after the masked man spoke beside the kneeling Americans.

However, the FBI did not elaborate their theory or their means of identifying the man aside from voice recognition analysis.

The FBI's investigation took off from principal investigations carried out by British government agencies because the man spoke "multicultural London English," according to initial voice analysis reports.

Thus, investigations centered on a list of hundreds of British militants who went to Syria to fight with the ISIS, also known as Daesh.

The man could also speak straight Arabic, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

Authorities believe that the man came from a family who spoke Arabic in London, possibly in a community where Asian immigrants are concentrated. In addition, the man's family may have initially come from Sudan or Yemen.

Peter Westmacott, the British ambassador to the U.S., told CNN in August that they were close to identifying the man.

However, British authorities controlled the amount of information released to the media to prevent complications in their investigation.

The Daesh early September released a third video showing the beheading of the British aid worker David Haines.

In the video, they demanded that UK Prime Minister David Cameron stop military action against them or they would kill Alan Henning, another British aid worker.

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