Killing mirrors Foley death

Journalist James Foley. Photo / AP

The video showing the killing of Steven Sotloff is a mirror image of that two weeks ago carrying the last words of his colleague James Foley.

Wearing an orange jumpsuit, meant to remind us of the inmates at Guantanamo Bay, Sotloff kneels as he reads out a prepared script denouncing United States foreign policy.

Afterwards, his captor, with the same British accent as Foley's apparent killer, addresses President Barack Obama, saying, "I'm back," and unleashing a further diatribe about American attacks on Isis.

He then begins to cut at Sotloff's neck, before the video fades out. It returns to a gruesome image of Sotloff's corpse, with his head lying on his chest.

The location is slightly different from that in the Foley video, in which tracks and a green valley could be seen. This enabled analysts to identify the location outside Raqqa, a town in Syria controlled by Isis, where it was filmed.The latest video shows a similar, remote desert landscape.

It begins with a clip of Obama speaking immediately after Foley's death.

It then switches to a close-up of Sotloff speaking to the camera. He looks relatively calm, even though his words refer to his imminent death.

Since he was last seen at the end of the Foley video, Sotloff's hair and beard have grown slightly.

When he finishes speaking, the video fades to black but returns with the captor speaking. As in the killing of Foley, he clutches a knife in his left hand and points it repeatedly at the camera to emphasise his words.

He refers to Amerli, Zummar and Mosul Dam - recent targets of US air attacks in support of offensives against Isis by Iraqi troops and Kurdish Peshmerga forces.

That is a clue to timing: Amerli, a Turkmen Shia town, was surrounded by Isis until the combined US and Iraqi attack lifted the siege last weekend.

"So just as your missiles continue to strike our people, our knife will continue to strike the necks of your people," the man goes on.

One difference from the Foley video is that Sotloff's body is shown in much closer detail.