In a letter penned to his parents in June, American hostage of Islamic State Peter Kassig expressed a fear of dying at the hands of his captors.
“I am obviously pretty scared to die but the hardest part is not knowing, wondering, hoping, and wondering if I should even hope at all,” Kassig, 26, wrote to his parents. “I am very sad that all this has happened and for what all of you back home are going through.”
Kassig, whose parents say he converted to Islam shortly after he was taken captive and now goes by the name Abdul-Rahman, is an Indiana native and former U.S. Army Ranger. The capture of Kassig in October 2013 was not widely reported until Friday when he appeared in a 71-second video from the group in which a militant beheaded a British hostage.
“Obama, you have started your aerial bombardment of Shams [Syria], which keeps on striking our people, so it is only right that we strike the necks of your people,” says a dagger-wielding man in the video, according to a translation by the Associated Press in Cairo.
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