Beirut: In a new low, a militant of the dreaded Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) publicaly executed his own mother after accusing her of apostasy.
As per a report published in The Independent, the activist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RIBSS) said 20-year-old jihadi Ali Saqr al-Qasem shot his mother Lena, 45, in the head with an assault rifle in front of a large crowd.
Lena al-Qasem is understood to have been accused of apostasy - a crime that usually means leaving one's religion but in practise is used by ISIS as a justification for murdering anybody who doesn't support or speaks out against the terror group.
1-#Raqqa Leena Al-Qasem (35 years) executor was her son Ali Saqr (born 1995) a member of #ISIS. Photo for him #Syria pic.twitter.com/AiqZJHrStA
— Tim Ramadan (@tim_ramadan) January 7, 2016
2-He executed his mother for apostasy in front of the Post building yesterday in Public execution #Raqqa #ISIS pic.twitter.com/ytW3NGaKAM
— Tim Ramadan (@tim_ramadan) January 7, 2016
However, it was revelead later that the exact charge against al-Qasem was “inciting her son to leave the Islamic State and escaping together to the outside of Raqqa,” according to the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights.
The UK-based conflict monitor said Ali Saqr al-Qasem had reported his mother to his ISIS superiors, who then sentenced her to death and ordered him be the one to kill her.
Citing local sources, a British-based Observatory said the 20-year-old man executed his mother on Wednesday near the post office building where she worked in front of hundreds of people in Raqqa, a main base of operations for the group in Syria.
The Islamic State group, which controls wide areas of Syria and Iraq, has executed hundreds of people it has accused of working with its enemies or breaching of its ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam.
