Terror group releases US scribe after 2 years

WASHINGTON: US journalist-writer Peter Theo Curtis has been released after a two-year captivity in Syria by al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front, less than a week after a ISIS beheaded freelance journalist James Foley.
Curtis' family revealed on Sunday that the government of Qatar helped negotiate his release, and they were told he was freed on a humanitarian basis without the payment of money.The unexpected development galvanized the Obama administration, which the Curtis family indicated was also was part of the negotiating proces, and which has declined to pay ransom to secure the release of several other Americans in captivity.
There was speculation whether the Nusra Front had been frightened into releasing Curtis after the US virtually threatened to hunt down the Jihadi John, who shocked the world by decapitating James Foley. US national security adviser Susan Rice confirmed that Curtis "is now safe outside of Syria," and will be reunited with his family shortly. "We have and will continue to use all of the tools at our disposal to see that the remaining American hostages are freed… We will continue to work tirelessly on behalf of all Americans who are held overseas so that they can be reunited with their families as well..." Rice said.
The UN too confirmed that Curtis was handed over to UN peacekeepers in Al Rafid village on Sunday evening, and after receiving a medical check-up, he was handed over to US officials.
Meanwhile, US and British intelligence agencies are said to be close to identifying Jihadi John. Some British media have named him as 23-year old Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, the son of Adel Abdel Bari, who is charged in the 1998 bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
The younger Bary was barely a toddler when British police are said to have stormed their home in London and arrested his father, who had come to England as a political refugee after Egyptian authorities bore down on him for his support for the Islamist cause. The young Bary apparently grew up as a disaffected young man, becoming a rapper of sorts as his father went through the law enforcement mill in U.K. where he came under suspicion for his role in the embassy bombings.
When the U.S had his father extradited to New York in 2012 to try him for the embassy bombings in which American lives were lost, the young Bari appears to have turned completely radical. The elder Bari's case is being prosecuted by the office of the New York Southern District Attorney Preet Bharara. US and British intelligence have said he was a frontman in London for Ayman Al Zawahiri.
Theo Curtis journey in life was totally different. A teacher in the Vermont prison system, he is said to have converted to Islam and traveled to Yemen to understand the ferment in the Muslim world and the Muslim mind. He then wrote a book called "Undercover Muslim," about Islamic extremism in Yemen.