Florida Remembers Slain Journalist Steven Sotloff

Gov. Rick Scott has called for all flags on federal and state building grounds in Florida to fly at half-staff Friday in honor of journalist Steven Sotloff.

Sotloff’s beheading was depicted in a video released by the terrorist group ISIS earlier this week.

“The people who did this are evil,” Scott said in a statement released following news of Sotloff’s death. “They are not merely wrong, they are not adversaries, they are evil. And evil must be confronted and destroyed.”

Sotloff, 31, worked as a freelancer for such publications as Time and Christian Science Monitor during his career. He was raised in Miami and attended the University of Central Florida.

UCF staged a vigil in Sotloff’s honor earlier this week that was attended by hundreds, according to Bay News 9.

In Tuesday’s video, Sotloff, dressed in a prison-type orange jumpsuit, said he was “paying the price” for America’s intervention in the Middle East, moments prior to beheading.

The ISIS representative is believed to be former British rapper Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, 24, according to AOL. He is also believed to be the same man who appeared in an August video showing the death of journalist James Foley.

“I’m back, Obama, and I’m back because of your arrogant foreign policy towards the Islamic State,” the man says on the video. He went on to say that America’s “insistence on continuing your bombings on Mosul Dam” are to blame.

Scott offered his condolences to the Sotloff family and called out President Barack Obama’s lack of a strategy for dealing with ISIS in his statement on the killing.

“Here is what they need to understand – Steve Sotloff was a Floridian, but more importantly he was an American,” Scott said. “If you attack one American, you are attacking all Americans. Last week President Obama said that his Administration does not at present have a strategy for dealing with ISIS – these immoral evil people.

“I think I can speak for all Floridians and all Americans when I say that the time for a strategy is now, and part of that strategy needs to include destroying them.”

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See Also:

ISIS Reportedly Beheads Florida Journalist Steven Sotloff