IS fighter executes own mother in public

Reports say 21-year-old committed matricide outside Raqqa post office after she asked him to flee jihadist group

By ToI Staff 8 January 2016, 6:05 pm

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ILLUSTRATIVE: An Islamic State fighter holds his AK-47 machine gun as he stands guard on the bank of the Euphrates River in Raqqa, Syria. (Militant website via AP)

A fighter from terror group Islamic State publicly executed his own mother because she asked him to defect from its ranks, an NGO monitoring human rights abuses in Syria and eyewitnesses said.

Ali Saqr, 21, executed his 35-year-old mother Lena al-Qasem outside the post office in Raqqa, eyewitnesses were quoted by the BBC as saying.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an NGO based in London, told the Washington Post that the execution took place in front of “hundreds of people” outside the office, in which al-Qasem worked.

The NGO said the mother and son argued over the son’s commitment to the Sunni group. Following the dispute, the fighter reported her to his leaders, who then arrested her.

“His mother spoke with him and asked him to leave ISIS and leave Raqqa to go to a different area of Syria and Turkey,” Rami Abdulrahman of the Observatory told the Washington Post by telephone. “After that he told ISIS and, one, two, three, they arrest his mother.”

Since June 2014, Abdulrahman said, the NGO documented the killings of more than 3,700 people in Syria, including 2,001 civilians, 106 women and 77 children. He said that the case in Raqqa was the first instance of matricide in the lines of the organization he was aware of.