Al Jazeera Arabic, the sister network of Al Jazeera English, has retracted an article from its website which suggested the murders of two US journalists by the Islamic State group were staged.

Al Jazeera's managing director, Yasser Abu Hilalah, said in a statement on Saturday that the article was inaccurate.

“In respect to families of the victims and as we share their grief, Al Jazeera Arabic's website decided to retract an inaccurate article that questioned the legitimacy of Foley and Sotloff's beheading videos after a theory surfaced on a number of American social media sites claiming they were produced as a pretext ahead of a US invasion of Syria.

"We want to take this as an opportunity to reiterate Al Jazeera previous position in condemning the kidnapping of the two journalists and condemning their killing as a heinous crime.

"We would like to also renew our call for the release of all kidnapped journalists, who are only carrying out their professional duty in seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues.

"Al Jazeera had previously issued a statement before the killing of Sotloff, appealed to the kidnappers to release him and adopted Sotloff's mother's message appealing to the kidnappers to release him.

"We, in Al Jazeera, would like to emphasise our policy of supporting the freedom of journalists and to protect them from any harm anywhere around the world."