The Islamic State terrorist group released a video on Wednesday claiming responsibility for the slaughter of dozens of Syrian journalists and media activists labelling them as spies of the ‘crusader coalition’.
ABNA 24 reports:
The ISIS-linked Al-Khair Media Center in Syria’s eastern Deir ez-Zor province released a short film documenting the execution of more than 100 Syrian media workers at the hands of ISIS fighters.
The video shows footages for the journalists and media activists who have been killed by ISIS over the past two years in Syria, while others were shot dead in Turkey–where a large group of Syrian journalists are based.
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Through the new propaganda video, the radical group tries to show Syrian journalists and media activists as spies to the U.S.-led coalition in the ISIS-held areas. It further threatens to pursue and kill all media workers who report information about the daily happenings in its territory under the pretext that they serve the ‘crusader coalition’.
Among the victims were some prominent local journalists and filmmakers, such as Naji al-Jarf who was killed by ISIS-linked gunmen in Turkey’s southern city of Gaziantep in December 2015. Jerf, known for producing documentaries hostile to the radical group of ISIS, was a member of the anti-ISIS media group ‘Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently’ (RBSS). He was also editor-in-chief of the Syrian magazine Hentah, which publishes reports on the daily lives of Syrian citizens under the ongoing war conditions.
Other prominent Syrian journalists executed by ISIS were Ahmed al-Mussa, Faris Hammadah and Ibrahim Abdulqadir among others.
The same video shows testimonies from two media activists, Muhammad Ali Karoush and Jamal Abdulrazaq al-Abitt, claiming to have leaked security information about ISIS to the western coalition.
ISIS concludes the short film by threatening to hunt ‘all spies’ of the U.S.-led coalition in the region.
“Media workers are main targets for ISIS terrorists. The group believes that independent reporters usually work for some hostile parties, particularly the western coalition, claiming that those activists could leak security information about the militants’ positions,” a civil rights activist in Deir ez-Zor said.
“In ISIS areas, working as a media activist is suicidal,” he said. “However, without those brave activists the world won’t have any access to information about the daily atrocities at the hands of ISIS militants against civilians.”
