This was Kotey’s biggest fear - the thing he once described to me as “the worst thing that could happen-absolute hell.”
In a two hour interview in a Syrian jail three years ago Kotey admitted being terrified of being locked up in the States.
This ruling - witnessed by the brother of one of his victims and other grieving relatives - is true justice as he now faces a life of tortuous drudgery in an American Supermax.
When I spoke to him he was praying for a trial in the UK because of our liberal sentencing.
He showed no sign of contrition for the suffering of ISIS victims, smiling at myself and photographer Rowan Griffiths as he described the casual way he had laughed at and delighted in watching beheading videos as a teenager in London.
It was just fun, he told me, the next new thing in entertainment for tough kids in west London, where he had been a petty criminal selling drugs.
“This was like the new Hollywood,” he declared, exasperated at my obvious inability to understand why viewing such horror would be “entertaining.”
We were sitting in a baking hot jail cell, as he reflected on his teen years, forging a criminal career which catapulted him to the top of of the most feared terror cell ever.
His casual view towards depravity and violence was evident throughout our interview - he was utterly unmoved by the reasons for his being jailed.
He talked us through his delight at watching a video of British ex-pat Ken Bigley being decapitated in Iraq way back in 2004 - by ISIS founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
It was as if he was talking about the latest video game released for the delight of teenagers - whilst acknowledging that this was a real human being murdered.
We spent weeks negotiating access to this killer and Kurdish intelligence officers gave us two hours as we mentally jousted with this street-wise, highly intelligent, ruthless psychopath.
After the death of Mohammed Emwazi - AKAK Jihadi John - Kotey became the most senior British member of ISIS and was a key player in the notorious Beatles gang.
He even admitted he had saved Emwazi’s life on the battlefield just months before his ruthless fellow Londoner became ISIS beheader in chief.
Dragging wounded Emwazi from the frontline meant the killer survived long enough to behead numerous victims, before being killed in a drone strike in 2015.
And sitting before us, just 160 miles from Raqqa, where he committed most of his crimes, Kotey struggled to show shame.
Asked if approved of Emwazi, his best friend from London, beheading people he only conceded: “Well I wondered if there was no other way of dealing with these people.”
“These people” were innocent journalists and aid workers, non combatants, harmless bystanders who were not involved in the war against ISIS.
That murdered British hostage David Haines’ brother Mike was in court will offer his family some closure, some justice for what ISIS did to journalists and aid workers.
But that Kotey felt victims of the Beatles had to be “dealt with” in any way is truly horrifying and his sentencing is fitting.
There is much justice in this, as Kotey admitted to me in his cell, being facing a court in the US was the worst of his fears, which he described as “absolute hell.”
But Kotey admitting his guilt was no sign of contrition, merely a gamble on his best bet one day to return to Britain, where he hoped to face jail for a few years and avoid a death sentence.
A gamble that means, thankfully, he will die in a US prison - his worst nightmare.
