Steven
J. Sotloff, a 31-year-old freelance journalist, self-described
“stand-up philosopher from Miami,” immersed himself in the tumult of the
Middle East for years, repeatedly venturing into some of the most
hazardous conflict zones. He reassured friends that he knew the risks as
he wrote for publications that included Time magazine, The Christian
Science Monitor and World Affairs Journal.
The
risks caught up with him a year ago when he was abducted in northern
Syria as he reported on the civil war that is still convulsing that
country, the most dangerous place for journalists, with more than 70
killed and 80 kidnapped since the conflict began.
A virtual news blackout on his fate was lifted on Tuesday when he appeared in an Internet video produced by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,
the extremist group holding him hostage, that showed the beheading of
James Foley, a 40-year-old fellow freelancer and abduction victim. The
video showed a black-clad masked militant towering above Mr. Sotloff as
he knelt in an orange jumpsuit, head shaved, with his captors warning
that Mr. Sotloff would be the next to die as retribution for American
airstrikes on ISIS targets in Iraq. The video ends with the militant
warning President Obama, in English, that Mr. Sotloff’s fate “depends on
your next decision.”
As of Friday, there was still no word on whether Mr. Sotloff had been killed.
Mr.
Sotloff’s family had desperately sought to keep his abduction quiet,
apparently fearing publicity could further endanger him. But the
strategy was upended when the world learned that Mr. Sotloff was an ISIS
hostage. Although his family still urged Mr. Sotloff’s friends not to
talk, more than 8,100 people have signed a petition
on the White House website, created on the same day the ISIS video was
posted, urging Mr. Obama “to take immediate action to save Steven’s life
by any means necessary.”
Described
by friends as selfless, Mr. Sotloff spent most of his life in Florida
except when he attended a boarding high school, Kimball Union Academy in
Meriden, N.H., where he apparently developed a penchant for reporting
and writing. He coedited the student newspaper, The Kimball Union,
graduated in 2002 and attended the University of Central Florida, where
he played rugby, worked for the independent student newspaper, Central
Florida Future, and expressed deep interest in travel to the Middle
East.
He left after three years and, soon after, began to pursue journalism full-time.
“The
guy lit up a room. He was always such a loyal, caring and good friend
to us,” Josh Polsky, who shared a dormitory suite with Mr. Sotloff, said
in a telephone interview. “If you needed to rely on anybody for
anything he would drop everything on a dime for you or for anyone else.”
Emerson
Lotzia Jr., another former college roommate, said that Mr. Sotloff was
undeterred by the risks of Middle East reporting. “A million people
could have told him what he was doing was foolish, it seemed like it to
us outsiders looking in, but to him it was what he loved to do and you
weren’t going to stop him,” Mr. Lotzia told Central Florida Future
on Wednesday. “Steve said it was scary over there. It was dangerous. It
wasn’t safe to be over there. He knew it. He kept going back.”
An avid user of social media until his last posting on Aug. 3 of last year, when he ruminated
about the Miami Heat basketball team, Mr. Sotloff described himself in
his Twitter biography as a “Stand-up philosopher from Miami.”
He wrote dispatches from conflicts in Bahrain, Egypt, Turkey, Libya and Syria. In one piece for Time about lawlessness in Libya,
published in the aftermath of the deadly Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the
American diplomatic compound in Benghazi that became a crisis for the
Obama administration, Mr. Sotloff was prophetic: “With no security
organizations to ensure order and an ineffective justice system unable
to prosecute suspects, Libyans fear their country is slowly crumbling
around them.”
In a report for World Affairs Journal
last year from Egypt after the military coup that deposed Mohamed
Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader who was the country’s first
democratically elected president, Mr. Sotloff gave voice to Muslim
Brotherhood supporters who felt disenfranchised. " ‘The people voted for
Morsi,’ 45-year-old teacher Sa’id Rashwan told me. ‘Why have a few now
decided he cannot rule?’ ”
Anne Marlowe, a writer, said on her Twitter account
that Mr. Sotloff had lived in Yemen for years, “spoke good Arabic,
deeply loved Islamic world.... for this he is threatened with
beheading.”
Mr.
Polsky, a lawyer, said that Mr. Sotloff’s circle of college
acquaintances, upon learning what had befallen their friend, immediately
began contacting one another after having drifted apart over the years.
“This
event has brought all of us back together,” he said. “As soon as we
learned of the circumstances, we all became in touch with one another
again out of concern for Steve’s well-being and to reminisce about our
experiences of our collegial lives.”
No comments:
Post a Comment