Why ISIS Demands $1 Million For James Foley’s Headless Body?

By Staff Reporter | Dec 11, 2014 01:12 PM EST

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The brutality of the ISIS militants just got even worst after they demanded $1 million for James Foley's headless body. Foley, was an American journalist beheaded by the vicious Islamic State jihadists. Based on the latest report, three middlemen were attempting to negotiate the sale deal.

The James Foley saga has not yet ended. And his family is facing fresh torture after the ISIS tried to sell his body for a million dollars. The Daily Mail reported Foley was the first American hostage to be beheaded by the Islamic State where his decapitation was showed through a graphic video released last summer.

Three sources in contact with ISIS or its associates told BuzzFeed News that the terrorists wanted to sell the remains of US journalist James Foley. They said the Islamic State demanded $1 million for Foley's body, which it would deliver across the border to Turkey.

To facilitate the deal, ISIS was willing to provide a DNA sample.

"They ask for $1 million, and they will send DNA to Turkey, but they want the money first," the source said. "They will not give the DNA without the money."     

ISIS has seized large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria while killing thousands of people in the process. According to The New York Post, the Islamic extremists had been financing its military by selling oil produced by the wells in the areas it has overrun as well as by collecting ransoms from the governments of its non-American hostages.

But since the price of crude oil is now dropping and the US and its ally, the UK, are standing firm by their no-ransom pay policy, ISIS devised the plan to sell the cadavers of their victims.   

A former Syrian rebel fighter who claimed to have an ISIS connection told BuzzFeed that he was approached by one of the jihadists' leaders and asked to negotiate a deal for the body. The New York Daily News reported that the source said his motivation was purely humane and he just wanted to give James Foley's grieving family an opportunity for closure.

Aside from James Foley, ISIS has also the bodies of other hostages including US-Israeli journalist Steven Sotloff, British aid worker Alan Henning and US aid worker Peter Kassig. To this time, two hostages are still in ISIS captivity, British journalist John Cantlie and a 26-year-old American female aid worker.

If the reports are proven true, the attempted sale of James Foley's remains would underscore the brutality behind ISIS' hostage-taking enterprise that has provided the terrorists with financial resources and publicity.  

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