Jury selection begins in terror trial of British national

By MATTHEW BARAKAT
Associated Press

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — Jury selection has begun in a Virginia courtroom for a British national charged with taking a leading role in an Islamic State scheme to take Americans and others as hostages for ransom. Four Americans taken hostage were killed, three by beheadings. El Shafee Elsheikh is better known as one of “the Beatles,” a nickname he and three other Brits were given by their captives because of their accents. He’s charged in a federal indictment in Alexandria, Virginia, as a leading participant in the hostage-taking scheme, which ran from 2012 through 2015 when the Islamic State group controlled large swaths of Iraq and Syria. The trial is expected to last at least three weeks.