ISIS Releases Sickening Video Clip Showing Syrian Woman Being Stoned to Death
John Hall, Daily Mail, October 21, 2014
Islamic State militants fighting in Syria and Iraq have released a sickening video of a young woman being stoned to death by a group of men–including her own father.
The shocking footage is understood to have been filmed in the city of Hama and shows a bearded cleric ranting at the woman in Arabic and accusing her adultery while she pleads for her life.
The woman turns to her father and begs his forgiveness but he coldly rejects her, saying he would rather please God. He then turns to the men to give the signal for his daughter’s murder to begin.
Minutes later, as the men rain rocks down upon the helpless woman, her father steps forward with a large stone and the video fades to black.
It is believed he had been granted the barbaric ‘honour’ of being allowed end the life of the daughter he felt had betrayed both him and her religion.
In a separate incident a man was executed in Idlib province in an area controlled by Islamist groups including the Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s official affiliate in Syria, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks violence on all sides of Syria’s civil war.
It is the first documented case of a man being stoned to death for adultery since Syria descended into civil war in 2011 and hardline Islamic groups emerged as powerful players in areas that slipped from government control, the Observatory said.
The sickening five-minute video emerged on ISIS-affiliated social media pages this morning. It is not clear when the footage was actually shot and has not been independently verified.
The exact accusations against the woman remain sketchy, although the cleric who appears at the start of mobile phone-filmed clip accuses her of committing adultery.
The militant orders her to be ‘content and happy’ that she is about to be stoned to death because, he says, her death has been ordered by God and is therefore required under Islamic law.
Asking her is she is now willing to ‘submit to God’ and be stoned to death, the young woman replies ‘yes’, before pleading with her father to forgive her.
After initially ignoring her, the man is eventually prompted into responding by the militant.
‘Don’t call me father,’ he tells his daughter, who responds by asking him to pray for her.
At this point her father turns to the ISIS fighters, who help him tie a rope around her neck and drag her to a pit, where the stoning begins.
As the militants rain down rocks on the defenseless woman, her father steps forward and picks up the largest rock before using it to strike and kill his daughter.
The exact moment of her death is not caught on camera as the footage fades to black moments before her father strikes her.
ISIS militants often use stoning to murder women they accuse of committing adultery.
Earlier this year the extremists stoned two women to death in Raqqa after accusing them of having sex outside marriage. Both were placed in holes in the ground before a lorry arrived to dump large rocks for the men to use to brutally murder the women.