Jihadists staged mock executions before killing Israeli ‘spy’

The Islamic State would repeatedly stage the execution of an Arab Israeli jihadist killed by the terror group in March with blanks before carrying out the killing “for real,” a Syrian witness said.

Palestinian prisoner Muhammad Musallam, 20, who was accused by IS of being a spy for Israel, told the witness his captors were repeatedly filming him in his own execution video.

Each time, he had explained, they would video a child shooting him in the head — but each time the gun would be empty.

“Then one day, they executed him for real,” said a 28-year-old Syrian who asked to be identified only by the nickname he uses in political activism, Adnan, in order to protect his family still living under IS rule.

In March, the Islamic State group released a 13-minute video showing Musallam’s death. Kneeling in a field, he was shot in the head by a young boy wearing military camouflage.

Adnan said he believes that is why many victims in the execution videos appear so calm. “They repeat the thing with them, like, 20 times. So when the real one comes, the prisoner thinks it’s just another mock execution,” he surmised.

Musallam left his home in East Jerusalem in October 2014 to join the ranks of the Islamic State, according to a Shin Bet spokesman. The spokesman for the security services told AFP he joined the jihadists “on his own initiative,” implying that he had not been sent by Israel.

The spokesman said Musallam traveled from Israel to Turkey and “from there crossed to Syria and joined IS to fight for the organization.”

In February, the Islamic State magazine Dabiq included an interview with the East Jerusalem resident who said he was recruited to work for the Mossad intelligence agency by his Jewish neighbor, a police officer named “Eli.”

Soon after his departure from Israel, Musallam told his brother that he was going to fight with IS. Musallam later contacted the family online from the extremists’ de facto capital of Raqqa in northern Syria, and said he wanted to return home, his father said.

“I saw him with a long beard and long hair and a Kalashnikov,” Said Musallam said. “He told me, ‘Look, Dad, I am fed up here, it is a country of war, and I want to come back.’” The family later received a call from an unidentified person who said Musallam had fled IS, was caught at a Turkish checkpoint, and was put in an IS jail.

Musallam’s family denied that he has any connection to Israel’s spy agency, the Mossad.

“They did not want to let him leave because if he were to return, he might be caught by the Israelis and tell them what he had seen. So they wanted to get rid of him,” the father said. “I know my son. I raised him well. I am sure he’s not working for the Mossad.

“He is not a spy, he went over on his own — they recruited him on the Internet. I don’t know what they said to him or how they got into his head, but he is not connected with the Mossad, the Shin Bet security services or anyone else,” Musallam’s father added.

Stuart Winer, Avi Lewis, and AFP contributed to this report.