Ricardo Vilanova was imprisoned for eight months by the infamous British jihadists. The BBC’s Quentin Sommerville helped him confront two of the group, now being held in secret

Ricardo Vilanova never wanted to be part of the story. The Spanish photojournalist went to Syria in 2011 to cover the revolution brewing against Bashar al-Assad. But at the end of 2013 there was no firm ground in the war. The rebels he thought would offer protection did not and he was taken hostage by Islamic State. The fracturing landscape brought a flood of new foreign fighters.

The men who captured Ricardo were from west London, a gang of four who were known to their captives as “the Beatles” and would become notorious as torturers and killers. One, Mohammed Emwazi, was killed in a drone strike in 2015. Another, Aine Davis, is doing time in a Turkish jail after being convicted on terrorism charges last year.

The other men suspected of being part of the group, Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh, are locked up, under US guard, at an undisclosed location in northern Syria. Together, the four men are accused of involvement in the beheading of 27 men. Both Kotey and Elsheikh, who were captured by Kurds in January, deny they were part of the torture cell.

Ricardo was freed from captivity in 2014 after eight months: the Spanish government is believed to have paid a ransom. He was flown back to Spain by private jet, cameras waiting on the runway, and still he didn’t want to be a part of the story.

The crimes were so appalling I didn’t want a part of it, either. I’d spoken to other experienced journalists who had interviewed Kotey and Elsheikh and they said it was a frustrating and disconcerting experience.

One veteran correspondent warned me to be careful; he worried that during his interview the suspects might have been trying to send coded messages in their answers. And they were prone to preaching; giving a platform to such men was not what any news organisation wants to do. They showed no remorse at being part of Isis, and expressed no sympathy for its victims.

But then, last month, I met Ricardo. My Syrian producer knew him, and suggested he might, for the first time, want to share his story – and, moreover, he wanted to meet the men who had captured him. When I sat down with him in Erbil, in northern Iraq, he told me why: “I want to look them in the eyes,” he said.

There’s a quiet fearlessness about this man. He was back at work a month after his kidnapping. “I’m a freelancer, I have to work,” he joked. Like many of the former hostages, he will not say much about what they endured in their dark, freezing cells. “It was like being under the control of psychopaths and lunatics,” he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ricardo Vilanova was held captive by Isis for eight months before he was freed in 2014. Photograph: Quentin Sommerville

His limbs still ache from captivity and he favours one side when sleeping now. There was no way to lie flat and rest in the cell; the men were shackled together and kept barefoot to prevent escape. Sometimes their tormentors slept in the next room. At times, the sounds of torture and of killing could be heard daily.

Their British jailers would, he said, show them the executions of their friends. They were 19 men held together and tortured physically and mentally. Guns were pressed against their heads, swords to their throats, and they were beaten. British, US, Japanese and Russian hostages were murdered, among them aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning and Americans James Foley, Abdulrahman Peter Kassig and Steven Sotloff.

Now Ricardo wanted to confront Kotey and Elsheikh. So we travelled to the town of Kobani to submit an interview request with the Kurdish forces in charge. The two men are held in solitary confinement; they said they did not know that Britain was attempting to have them tried in the US, a move that caused a row in parliament and has been stopped for the moment by a judicial review.

Ricardo said: “They would call themselves the elite of the Islamic State but, when Raqqa fell, they were among the first ones who tried to flee the city and save their lives.”

All of this in a city that was under attack. There were days when the walls and the windows of their jail cells shook and trembled from the bombings. Once they heard a gun battle nearby: the hostages were grabbed and thrown into trucks – they were worth too much to leave behind. “They were about to lose all their prisoners on several occasions because they were losing ground rapidly at that moment of the war,” Ricardo said.

Even today, Ricardo is well known in Syria – this was his fourth trip this year – and people were fascinated by his story, slapping him on the back and saying they admired his nerve for coming back. A meeting was arranged.

I sat with Kotey and Elsheikh first. They spun an improbable story about how, in Syria’s chaos, they had simply sought protection from Isis. They claimed never to have met any of the hostages. Outside, in the next room, Ricardo listened and waited. They were arrogant, cracked jokes and showed no remorse. Elsheikh wanted to know how other journalists had portrayed them. It was his only question about the outside world. He is accused of waterboarding, crucifixions and killings. He rubbed his prayer beads throughout the interview.

Kotey is also accused of torture, including electric shocks; it’s alleged he was a recruiter, responsible for bringing others to Isis. Both men refused to answer any questions on what they did for Isis.

I asked them if they knew Emwazi, the man known as Jihadi John, who played the part of chief executioner in the beheading videos. “He’s a friend of mine,” said Kotey. He went on to paint an unrecognisable portrait of a man the rest of the world will remember only for his brutality and sadism.

It was nauseating. When I asked Ricardo about their comments, he dismissed them with a laugh. “Jihadi John was a complete psycho, he was brainless and he enjoyed making other people suffer,” he said.

Emwazi was killed in 2015. “They droned him in the middle of Raqqa. As they were planning to do with us,” said Elsheikh.

They attempted to act as though that they had been wronged and they were well-prepared and careful in their answers. Kotey mentioned Allah only once and corrected himself, saying God instead.

It was Ricardo’s turn now. As he entered the room, the blood moon still hung in the clear sky. Was there a flicker of recognition from the suspects? Perhaps.

He wanted to ask them if they had a message for their daughters and for the children of the men they are accused of murdering, and wanted to know why they had fled the battlefield like cowards.

Their mood changed: they were suddenly uncooperative, and refused to answer. They appeared rattled and reached under their shirts to pull off their microphones. Ricardo stared at them steadily.

The interview was over, and the Spaniard reached for his camera. He left the room and through the caged window he attempted to take a last picture of the men accused of torturing him and murdering his friends. They pushed the window closed, trying to shut him out. But he got the picture.

We were invited for a late dinner with the local security forces: the table was heaped with kebabs, hummus and more besides. Our thoughts turned to Haines, Foley and the other murdered men.

“The only thing to say about James, Steven, David, Alan, Peter is that they were remarkable people and that they faced death with the strength the ‘Beatles’ lacked when their moment arrived,” Ricardo said.

This was the story he never wanted to be a part of, but he had completed it. He picked up his camera, left the restaurant and got ready for the next day’s assignment.

Quentin Sommerville is Middle East correspondent for BBC News