Miami: Hundreds of people attended a religious ceremony in Miami commemorating Steven Sotloff, the second American journalist beheaded by the Islamic State (IS) Sunni extremist organisation.
The memorial for the journalist was held Friday at Temple Beth Am in the Miami suburb of Pinecrest with the journalist’s friends, family and associates in attendance.
The ceremony, organised amid tight security, was also attended by well known Florida politicians like House of Representatives member Mario Diaz-Balart and Senator Marco Rubio.
“I knew him as a kid. He was a good boy and a good son,” Rosario Echegarruga, a friend of the Sotloff family for over 20 years, told Efe news agency.
Sotloff was born in Pinecrest and studied at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, where several vigils in his memory have been held over the past few days.
“Everyone is upset. I don’t think the (US) president (Barack Obama) did everything possible to save him,” Echegarruga said minutes before the funeral began.
The 31-year-old Sotloff was a freelancer who reported on the Middle East for publications such as Time magazine, World Affairs and the Christian Science Monitor. He went missing in Syria about a year ago.