DUSHANBE, June 24, 2015, Asia-Plus – The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group militants are reportedly brutally enforcing fasting for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in their territories.
Two children have reportedly been “crucified” by ISIL for not fasting during the holy month of Ramadan.
The boys, believed to be under the age of 18, were killed in Syria and their bodies displayed with placards hung around their necks announcing their “crime.”
Their deaths in the town of Mayadin, Deir Ezzor province, were reported by the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) on June 22.
“The boys’ bodies were suspended from a crossbar near the so-called Islamic State’s religious police headquarters,” SOHR founder Rami Abdel Rahman told
AFP
news agency in an interview.
“Apparently, they were caught eating,” he said, adding that the signs hung around their necks claimed they broke the Ramadan fast “with no religious justification.”
The Independent
it is the first time children have been killed or crucified by ISIL. In February, a UN Committee on the Rights of the Child report recorded “several cases of mass executions of boys, as well as reports of beheadings, crucifixions of children and burying children alive”.
A month later, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that Sharia courts in the group’s Iraqi stronghold of Mosul were sentencing people to “crucifixion” for banditry, as well as passing down sentences including stoning and amputation for minor and unproven offences.
Mayadin is one of many towns in Deir Ezzor captured by the extremist group during the Syrian civil war.
Three more “crucifixions” were reported on June 23 in al-Kasra, another ISIL-held town in the province, according to
The Independent
.
The men were reportedly executed before their bodies were hung up but the reason they were killed was unclear.
A penal code published by the extremist group specifying a set of fixed punishments in its territories across Syria and Iraq in January included “death and crucifixion” for murder and stealing.
But “crucifixions” by ISIL have been reported extensively since the group’s advance last year and the gruesome punishment appears to have been used for several alleged crimes.
ISIL militants do not appear to crucify people by nailing or tying them to a cross as a method of execution, but use crosses and bars to pose bodies after people have been killed to terrorize civilians in their territories.
