The four Islamic State hostages whose barbaric beheadings made headlines around the world over the past three months suffered extreme forms of physical torture, according to a report detailing the life of foreign captives with the jihadists.

The New York Times pieced together the events surrounding the struggle for survival of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning to reveal for the first time the hidden ordeal they suffered in the hands of their brutal captors.

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The report is based on the accounts of five former hostages, eye witnesses and people who were involved in attempts to free the prisoners before they were slain.

The Times revealed that the Americans and the Britons were just four of the hundred hostages held in the underground network of Syrian prisons.

Their captivity coincided with the rise of the Islamic State, then known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, who later became the dominant rebel group in the region and subsequently took control of the foreign captives.

For months, Foley and his fellow prisoners suffered excruciating physical tortures, including severe beatings, starvation and waterboarding.

According to the report, the four were singled out for the worst tortures, largely for their governments' refusal to pay ransom and for the militants' deep hatred of the United States and the UK.

According to a former Belgian captive, 19-year-old Jejoen Bontinck, the British trio who guarded them, among them the notorious Jihadi John of the beheading videos, seemed to have taken pleasure in brutalizing Foley and British photojournalist John Cantlie.

Bontinck spent three weeks in the same prison cell as Foley in 2013.

Other former hostages said the person who was treated the cruelest was Foley. They said he underwent prolonged beatings and mock executions, and was repeatedly waterboarded, a form of torture meant to simulate drowning.

Their testimonies tell that the tortures were often so severe they were relieved when Foley came back to their cell bloodied. They knew Foley suffered worse when he returned without blood.

Previously held captive by rebel and jihadist groups that were vying for the establishment of a caliphate in the region, 15 of Foley's fellow prisoners were released one by one after their countries agreed to make ransom payments.

By June, only seven of them remained: the four Americans and the three British citizens.

Of this group, three are believed to be still alive - Peter Kassig, an emergency medical technician who earlier this month was threatened to be executed next, one unnamed American woman, and Cantlie, who was captured with Foley and has appeared recently in Islamic State propaganda videos. 

TagsIslamic State torture hostages before beheadings, ISIS, ISIS foreign hostages, james foley, Steven Sotloff, David Haines, Alan Henning, Peter Kassig, ISIS beheading videos