Raqqa, Isis begins to crack after execution of a seven year old boy
by Pierre Balanian

The child had been accused of "blasphemy." The execution took place in public in front of his parents and a crowd. A girl is locked in a cage with corpses and bones of the dead for being caught without a veil in her own home.

 


Raqqa (AsiaNews) – Cracks are beginning to appear in the Islamic Caliphate in tandem with the level of horrors perpetrated. A Christian citizen, one of the few remaining in the city of Raqqa, who converted to Islam to save his life, has told AsiaNews the terrible story of the execution of a Syrian Muslim child. The public execution took place on 6 March.

The child was named Muaz Hassan and he was just seven years old. He was arrested on charges of having blasphemed against the "divine essence", while playing with his friends on the road near his home. Many have wondered how can a child of seven years can even know how to insult the divine essence or how anything a child can say would be interpreted to that effect.

The child was immediately declared a "kafir" (infidel), detained in an unknown place – without anyone being able to know how he was treated in prison - and then he was sentenced to death.

The sentence was carried out in Duwar el Naiim square of Raqqa, on 6 March, Friday, in the hours that preceded the prayer of the faithful, the Salat-el- Dohr, the noon prayer.

The small Muaz was dragged bound before hundreds of inhabitants of the city, some who had willingly come, others forced to attend to the "blasphemous” child's punishment . The Daesh Executioners then shot him to death in front of his parents. His mother fainted and was taken away in a daze.

The killing of an innocent child has created quite a stir not only among the inhabitants, but also among some prominent Isis members,  to the extent that our source speaks of "cracks beginning to emerge within the Daesh" leadership, because of this execution.

Other divisions have emerged in recent days: this time due to the invention of a new punishment for girls who do not conform to the rigid dictates of dress.

Last month in Raqqa a girl was caught with her head uncovered while cleaning the stairs of the building inhabited exclusively by her family. For punishment the girl was locked in an iron cage in the public square with skeletons and bones of people killed by Daesh. The desperate girl spent hours screaming and begging to be released before passing out. Left in the cage for another hour, she was transported to the hospital in Raqqa, then another hospital, but has yet to regain her faculties.

After three years, the residents of Raqqa, the Syrian city that lies on the banks of the Euphrates, 170 km east of Aleppo, are still unaccustomed to the increasingly irrational and inhuman punishment systems put in place by Daesh.

After first falling into  the hands of the Al-Nusra Front, three months later it came under the full Isis control as part of the Islamic Caliphate. Raqqa has become now the headquarters of Daesh and is pompously called the capital of the self-proclaimed Islamic caliphate.

As a result of the martyrdom of this innocent child, for the first time, there are indications of divisions beginning to appear in Isis, which will certainly also have political repercussions beyond a mere ethical condemnation by members  who cannot in conscience condone such acts.