PINECREST, Fla. – During his career as a foreign correspondent, Steven Sotloff published stories about Bahrain, Yemen, Egypt, Turkey and Libya.
Sotloff devoted his last years to reporting from Syria. In 2012, he reported from Aleppo that civilians were "trapped in a violent stalemate, left to endure a war whose suffering and hardships grow larger with every passing day."
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Last year, in January he reported "the Syrian government has intensified its bloody campaign." Sotloff once wrote for the Jerusalem Post that "as Syria descends deeper into chaos, violence is becoming a basic staple more abundant than bread.
"And as it does, the human cost of a war that will not end soon is becoming increasingly unbearable."
Sotloff was a student at Kimball Union Academy, a boarding school in New Hampshire. It was there when he began to work in his student newspaper until he graduated in 2002. He was a journalism student at the University of Central Florida. He played rugby and worked for Central Florida Future, a student newspaper.
Sotloff had been risking his life since he began his work in 2008. To work as a freelance reporter he learned Arabic and moved to Benghazi. His last attempt to report on the humanitarian crisis in Syria got him killed.
In a Daily Beast article, Sotloff's friend Ben Taub said Sotloff told him it was his last trip as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East. He was planning on returning to school in Florida.
"Sotloff told me he was sick of being beaten up, and shot at, and accused of being a spy.
"Just the day before, Turkish police had hit and pepper-sprayed him for taking pictures at a protest in a nearby city .... Last time he'd been in Syria, a government sniper nearly killed him after spotting the tiny glow of his cigarette through a bathroom window while he sat on a toilet."
Here are links to some of the articles that Sotloff left behind: