Notorious Islamic State 'Beatles' in US custody, but can 11,000 other detainees be held securely?
AMMAN, Jordan - The ragged band of Western hostages, enduring captivity in the heart of Islamic State's self-proclaimed caliphate, somehow summoned the grim humor to nickname the four guards with distinctive English accents who tormented them daily.
They called them "the Beatles."
Eventually, three Americans among the captives held by the cell in 2014 and 2015, together with several other foreign hostages, would be beheaded in the bleak Syrian desert, with the killings recorded in grotesque Islamic State propaganda videos.
Amid the chaos of the ongoing Turkish incursion into northern Syria, U.S. forces have whisked two of the surviving "Beatles" suspects out of the fighting zone, where their American-allied Kurdish jailers now face the prospect of being overrun by a vastly more powerful Turkish force.
But the fate of 11,000 other Islamic State detainees, about 2,000 of them foreign fighters, has emerged as a major reason for concern as Turkish forces push deeper into Syria. There's scant expectation that U.S.-backed Kurdish militia fighters, many of whom feel betrayed by President Donald Trump's abrupt pullback of
