The White House has confirmed that an internet video purporting to show the beading of American reporter Steven Sotloff by the Islamic State extremist group is authentic, Fox News reported Wednesday.
"The US Intelligence Community has analyzed the recently released video showing US citizen Steven Sotloff and has reached the judgment that it is authentic," National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in a statement released early Wednesday. "We will continue to provide updates as they are available."
The global terror intelligence firm SITE first reported the release of the 2-minute video, titled "A Second Message to America," in which Sotloff, a 31-year-old freelance journalist, speaks to the camera before a cloaked Islamic State fighter begins to decapitate him.
“I’m sure you know exactly who I am by now and why I am appearing,” Sotloff said under apparent duress. "Obama, your foreign policy of intervention in Iraq was supposed to be for preservation of American lives and interests, so why is it that I am paying the price of your interference with my life?”
The video then cuts to the masked militant warning that as long as US missiles “continue to strike our people, our knife will continue to strike the necks of your people.”