Steven Sotloff, 1983-2014
"When I told my Egyptian friend Ahmad Kamal that I wanted to go to the Muslim Brotherhood protest camp in Nasser City, a pallid look gripped him. 'Don't go there!' he pleaded.
"'They are fanatics who hate foreigners. Americans like you are in danger there.' After an hour of fruitless conversation over endless glasses of sweet tea, I rose, shook Ahmad's hand, and headed straight to the lair where he believed I would be devoured."
That's what American journalist Steven Sotloff wrote last year, when he was covering the turmoil in Egypt. Sotloff -- a 31-year-old Florida native who wrote dispatches from the Middle East for such diverse publications as Foreign Policy and Time magazine and occasionally turned up on cable news -- was described by all knew him as pretty much the guy from that article: Mild-mannered, hard-working, and utterly fearless. His specialty was covering the human suffering of those in refugee camps, on the Syrian border and elsewhere, because he thought the world needed to know more about the plight of those who were trapped there.
Thirteen months ago, Sotloff was kidnapped in Syria -- by, we now know, the monstrous Islamic extremist group known as ISIS. Recently, after his fellow journalist James Foley was executed by these same barbarians, his mother Shirley Sotloff pleaded for her son's release.
"Steven is a journalist who travelled to the Middle East to cover the suffering of Muslims at the hands of tyrants," she said, looking directly to camera. "He is an honourable man and has always tried to help the weak."
It was to no avail. Today, ISIS released a reportedly gruesome video of Sotloff's apparent execution. Those who knew Sotloff, and those like me who merely read -- and read about -- his work, will remember his dedication to the truth long after the heartless bastards who murdered him are forgotten in the ashes of hell. In the days ahead, there will be a lot of talk about how the United States and other civilized nations should respond to ISIS, which is metastasizing quickly in that region of the world. Hopefully that response will have the same intelligence, and sense of what's best for humanity, that Steven Sotloff showed in his 31 years on earth.