Sunday, 3 January 2016

Isis video: who are the purported victims?

A man who said his footage of an Isis-held area appeared on the BBC is among the five Arab hostages purportedly murdered in an Isis propaganda video.
The men, aged 25 to 40 years old, are all labelled in the Isis propaganda video asmurtad – meaning apostate in Arabic – and wear orange jumpsuits. They appear to ask for forgiveness and call for Muslims to return to the faith.
Later in the video they appear bound, with heads down, crouching on the knees in front of an English-speaking militant, before they are violently murdered.
Ubi Muhammad Abdul Ghani, 26, said he was from Raqqa in the north of Syria. Speaking under duress, he appears to say – in Arabic translated by the Guardian – that he had agreed to do covert camera work, such as taking videos and stills, in the Isis stronghold.
In the propaganda film, he said that video he had taken had been shown on the BBC and Orient News, a Syrian news channel.

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