The Americans ISIS Executed in Syria: Inside Washington’s Search for Their Remains

With Qatari support, the United States has revived its long-standing efforts to recover the remains of American citizens killed by ISIS in Syria since 2014.

Washington sees the possible fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime and the rise of a new leadership looking to improve ties with the U.S. as a chance to finally close the file on the missing Americans—an issue that has long been part of U.S. campaign promises.

Search for the Remains

In a significant development, a Qatari team has begun searching in Syria for the remains of American hostages killed by ISIS nearly a decade ago, Reuters has learned.

At the height of its power between 2014 and 2017, ISIS controlled large areas of Syria and Iraq and executed several hostages, including American and other Western citizens, releasing videos of the killings that resembled Hollywood-style productions.

According to two sources, Qatari International Search and Rescue team launched the search on May 7, 2025, accompanied by several Americans.

The same Qatari team had previously responded to earthquake disasters in Morocco and Turkiye. So far, it has found the remains of three individuals, though their identities have not yet been confirmed.

The initial focus of the search has been on locating the remains of aid worker Peter Kassig, who was beheaded by ISIS in Dabiq, northern Syria, in 2014. Kassig, who was 26, is among those they hope to identify, a Syrian security source told Reuters.

On November 15, 2014, ISIS released a video allegedly showing Kassig’s beheading. The footage included a masked militant standing beside a bloodied severed head, saying in British-accented English: “This is Peter Edward Kassig, the American citizen. Where is your country now?”

Kassig, originally from Indiana, had converted to Islam during his captivity and was also known as Abdul-Rahman. His parents said he was abducted on October 1, 2013, while traveling to Deir ez-Zor in eastern Syria.

A former soldier, Kassig was doing humanitarian work through a group he founded in 2012—Special Emergency Response and Assistance—helping Syrian refugees.

He was the fifth Western national executed by ISIS following the group’s self-declared caliphate. Before him, ISIS had killed two American journalists—James Foley and Steven Sotloff—and two British aid workers. American aid worker Kayla Mueller also died in ISIS captivity, with U.S. officials confirming her death in 2015.

According to Reuters, the remains of Kassig, Sotloff, and Foley are believed to be in the Dabiq area in Aleppo countryside, one of ISIS’s former strongholds.

A Possible Burial Site

In Dabiq—a dusty hill about a two-hour drive from Aleppo—the area now resembles an archaeological dig site.

Dozens of investigators are working with shovels, ground-penetrating radar, pickaxes, and paintbrushes to sift through the soil, searching for bones or clothing in hopes of uncovering evidence that ISIS may have buried its victims there.

“We’re grateful for anyone taking on this task and risking their lives in some circumstances to try and find the bodies of Jim and the other hostages,” said Diane Foley, James Foley's mother. “We thank all those involved in this effort.”

ISIS had a notorious cell known as “The Beatles,” named for the British accents of its members, responsible for executing and beheading foreign journalists and aid workers in Syria.

On April 14, 2022, a U.S. federal court found El Shafee Elsheikh, a former British citizen of Sudanese origin, guilty of involvement in the deaths of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller, according to AFP.

Two other former British members of the ISIS cell, also involved in the beheadings of American hostages, are now serving life sentences in the United States.

The case of the American victims resurfaced in 2022, when British photojournalist John Cantlie, kidnapped in November 2012, was reported to have pleaded for a ransom payment in a message smuggled out of Syria, revealed by The Sunday Times on April 16, 2022.

Cantlie, who converted to Islam during captivity, remains missing. He was last seen alive in an ISIS propaganda video filmed in Iraq in December 2016.

In a 2014 letter smuggled to his family, Cantlie wrote that the group was demanding a total of $100 million for six British and American hostages.

The letter was delivered by Federico Motka, an Italian aid worker who had been freed after Italy paid a $5 million ransom.

Later, in 2015, the U.S. military confirmed the death of Mohammed Emwazi, also known as Jihadi John, in an airstrike in ar-Raqqah. Emwazi had appeared in the August 2014 video where he held a knife and threatened American journalist James Foley, whose beheading was shown at the end of the footage.

Emwazi is also believed to have played a role in the executions of American journalist Steven Sotloff, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, American aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig (Peter Kassig), and Japanese journalist Kenji Goto.

An Intelligence-Driven Mission

The latest operation in Syria, carried out with the support of Qatar, builds on years of intelligence work aimed at identifying sites where ISIS is believed to have buried the bodies of its foreign victims.

This effort has involved satellite image analysis, interviews with surviving ISIS hostages, and interrogations of the group’s leaders and members held in prisons operated by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in al-Hasakah, northeastern Syria.

According to one of two sources who spoke to Reuters, plans for the Qatari mission were discussed during an April 2025 visit to Washington by Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani and Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Mohammed al-Khulaifi.

That visit also served to prepare for U.S. President Donald Trump's planned trip to Qatar in mid-May 2025.

The investigation is being led by the Soufan Group, a security and intelligence firm founded by former FBI counterterrorism agent Ali Soufan. His team, made up of former FBI and counterterrorism colleagues, is working on behalf of the families of American victims.

While coordinating closely with the FBI, the Soufan Group operates independently.

The mission has been launched and fully funded by the Qatari government, which spared no effort, deploying an entire search and rescue team along with forensic experts, doctors, crime scene investigators, and a SWAT unit, filling a massive C-17 military transport aircraft with personnel and equipment.

“We brought everything we need to recover the buried bodies for this humanitarian mission,” said Major Khalid al-Humaidi of Qatar’s internal security forces in a media statement.

“We’ve continued scanning the area, checking water systems and every other network using the necessary tools and manual equipment.”

After four days of digging atop the hill under a scorching sun, the team uncovered full or partial remains of more than a dozen individuals, which have now been sent for DNA analysis.

It remains unclear whether the remains belong to the missing American hostages or to other victims executed by ISIS.

So far, the team remains hopeful. They are finding human remains in shallow graves, and more importantly, in the very locations predicted. Alongside the American victims, ISIS’s “Beatles” cell is suspected of abducting around 20 journalists and aid workers from Europe, Russia, and Japan, who have been missing since the group’s peak in Syria.

Successive U.S. administrations have long committed to the mission of recovering the remains of American citizens killed abroad. In fact, there have been multiple earlier efforts “involving U.S. government officials on the ground in Syria to search in very specific areas.”

According to experts, several key factors helped enable the renewed American effort to locate and recover remains in Syria:

First, the new Syrian government has offered full cooperation to facilitate the mission.

Second, Syria’s revamped intelligence services appear to hold valuable information about ISIS operations that could lead to burial sites where foreign victims may be interred.

When he was head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Syria’s transitional president Ahmed al-Sharaa led offensives against ISIS and pursued its cells across northern Syria in recent years.

Third, the American remains file could bolster Damascus's push for the lifting of U.S. sanctions, demonstrating a high degree of cooperation on issues vital to American interests.