Death and desecration in Syria: Jihadist group 'crucifies' bodies to send message
May 2, 2014 -- Updated 1911 GMT (0311 HKT)
A body is strung up
on a cross in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa on Tuesday, April 29.
The al Qaeda splinter group ISIS said the brutal display serves as a
lesson to anyone who dares challenge its rule.
Masked men drag the bloodied body of a man across a public square, and tie it to a make-shift cross on a metal pole.
Green string holds the body's arms outstretched across a wood plank as blood oozes from the gunshot wound to his head.
Militiamen wrap the
body's black "WhatsApp" shirt with a sign in red letters that reads in
Arabic: "This man fought Muslims and detonated an IED here."
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The eyewitness -- a man
we will call Abu Ibrahim -- does more than watch. He steps closer and
snaps a picture with his cell phone; the children around him gawk at the
horrific spectacle with quiet curiosity.
Abu Ibrahim asked that
his identity be kept secret for fear of reprisals. His photographs
document the story of a body staged to look like a crucifixion -- and to
send a message -- in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa. An al Qaeda
splinter group, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), says the brutal
display serves as a lesson to anyone who dares challenge its rule.
Three days on, the "crucified" body of the man and another victim were reportedly still hanging in Raqqa.
"What they are conveying
is those who oppose ISIS rule oppose God's rule, and those who are
enemies of ISIS are enemies of God and deserve the highest form of
punishment possible," says Abbas Barzegar, assistant professor of
Islamic studies at Georgia State University.
The jihadist group
carried out a total of seven public executions in Raqqa on Tuesday, but
only two bodies were displayed afterward, according to the Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based monitoring group.
Abu Ibrahim, a member of
a recently formed anti-ISIS activist group in Raqqa, says the remaining
five victims were children under the age of 18, one of them a
seventh-grade student.
The crucifixion displays
began in March, when ISIS accused a shepherd of murder and theft, then
shot him in the head and tied his lifeless body to a wooden cross. Video
on social media showed the body leaning up against a small building
painted to bear the group's flag and name.
"These violent acts are
part of a fundamentalist revival campaign, but these forms of ancient
punishment were rarely if ever seen in the Muslim world in recent
centuries," Barzegar says. "It has become a standard feature of fringe
Islamist groups to revive these outdated practices in an effort to bring
back what they believe is authentic."
There's been no evidence
of actual crucifixion, a painful form of execution in which victims
were bound or nailed through the hands and feet to a heavy wooden cross
and left to suffer until death.
All three men in Raqqa
were shot in the head prior to being affixed to crosses. The displays of
their bodies appear to be largely symbolic acts by ISIS followers
against members of their own Sunni Muslim sect for perceived acts of
treason.
"ISIS needs to attach
meaning to their killing. Simply murdering in a state of constant
warfare is void of value, so they must attach a message or propaganda to
what they are doing," Barzegar says.
As Syria's civil war
creates a power vacuum, groups like ISIS have stepped in with their own
form of radical Sharia law to rule over an exhausted and terrorized
civilian population. Edicts often appear overnight on inconspicuous
flyers, with dire warnings:
"All shop owners must
close their stores immediately upon the announcement of prayer and go to
the mosque," a decree posted this week reportedly reads. "Any violators
after the issuance of this announcement will face consequences."
According to a set of
rules issued to Raqqa's Christian minority, members of the faith must
pay a special tax to the militants and may not expose crosses, repair
churches, or recite prayers in the presence of Muslims, the Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights reported in February.
But while crucifixion
holds specific biblical resonance, the bold and brutal displays in Raqqa
hold no direct correlation to Christian symbolism, Barzegar says. The
ISIS victims whose bodies were strung up on crosses were all Muslim.
After nearly a year
under the repression of ISIS, Abu Ibrahim and about 20 other activists
formed a campaign in April that they called "Raqqa is Being Slaughtered
Silently" to push the vigilante group out of their hometown.
"After we reached the
solid conviction, without the shadow of a doubt, that (Raqqa) served as
the stage of a horrific spectacle that deformed the real core of the
Syrian revolution," the campaigns founding document reads, "we decided
it was about time we stood against those forces of evil."
ISIS reacted almost
immediately to the campaign, sentencing the activists to death for
"non-belief in Islam and their advocacy of secularism," and offering a
large cash prize for any information on their whereabouts, according to
the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
"It is our obligation to
confront them (ISIS) and if we remain scared of them then they will
rule us forever. It is true this is dangerous and we have received more
than one death threat, but we are relying on the popularity of our
Facebook page as protection," Abu Ibrahim told CNN via a choppy Skype
connection.
On their Facebook page
with nearly 12,000 followers, activists post updates on alleged crimes
committed against the people of Raqqa and issue calls to action such as
proposing a strike by store owners on Saturday to protest an ISIS tax
hike.
"Life here is very hard.
People are tired and they hate everything. If you don't close your shop
during prayer time you get lashes, if you smoke you get lashed, if you
say one wrong thing you can be executed. Just like that. It's that easy
for ISIS," Abu Ibrahim says.
The United Nations, the
Syrian opposition and human rights groups have corroborated the scenes
of horror in Raqqa. Earlier this year, U.N. High Commissioner for Human
Rights Navi Pillay said reported mass executions in Raqqa may amount to
war crimes, and in a separate report issued last month, her office
documented torture and mistreatment, including repeated beatings, of
prisoners at schools and hospitals controlled by ISIS.
"So many families have
had people disappear and they have no idea where they are or what
happened to them. The worst part is people are too afraid to ask about
their husbands or sons," Abu Ibrahim says.
After nearly every
Friday prayer, a few of these prisoners appear in a public roundabout
where dozens of onlookers stand by as charges are hurriedly read and the
sentences against the accused carried out, ranging from lashes to
executions. Images of the harrowing scenes often circulate on
social-media sites, sometimes posted by accounts claiming to be linked
to the extremist group.
"It is like a waterfall
of blood. There are more and more executions and now the children watch
like they are used to it. It is a strange and exciting scene and they
are not afraid to look," Abu Ibrahim says.
ISIS's military
offensive against even its former allies and its savage form of justice
led the central al Qaeda command to disown its affiliate earlier this
year, but the group's leader, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, vowed to remain in
Syria and fight all who oppose him, even fellow jihadists.
The founders of the peaceful campaign "Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently" say they will succeed where others have failed.
"The word is often more powerful than the bullet, and the will of the people is the most powerful of all," Abu Ibrahim says.
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