ICC Note: A former Islamic State jihadist that escaped the terror organization’s grip has shared his experience with the militant group. Zurab is from the North Caucasus and joined ISIS after being affected by the group’s propaganda of Muslims suffering in the Middle East. Upon his arrival in Syria he witnessed that the Islamic State itself was the true perpetrator of injustice. Zurab shares his witness of seeing bodies totally mutilated and Christians slaughtered without a word.
06/07/2016 Syria (IBTimes): An escaped Islamic State (Isis) jihadist has said that during his time in Syria fighters would mutilate corpses and kill Christians on-the-spot. The former extremist calls himself Zurab and is from Ingushetia in the North Caucasus – which borders Chechnya, a region which has supplied many fighters to Daesh (Isis).
Zurab says he spent a year in Syria protecting feared red-bearded Minister of War Omar al-Shishani who is said to be now be ‘clinically dead’ after a US air strike. The elusive Chechen, who was born Tarkhan Tayumurazovich Batirashvili in Georgia, is more commonly known by his nom de guerre, Omar al-Shishani, and is probably the most famous Russian-speaking jihadist.
The repentant jihadist says that he was tempted into fighting in the self-declared caliphate after watching slickly-edited propaganda videos that IS publish on the internet. The videos of Muslims suffering in the Middle East touched a nerve with the former bodyguard and he decided to leave to join the mujahedeen.
But after seeing the horrors of fighting with IS he changed his mind and decided to escape. Zurab told his experiences to the Russian state affiliated RT news network describing IS’s actions as “worse than the tyranny of the government forces.”
“They were extremely brutal, killing women and the elderly who did not obey them. They abused and mutilated their dead bodies. They cut up the corpses, tied them to the back of the cars and dragged them along,” Zurab said.
Christians were killed on-the-spot, without a word spoken, he continued. “They would find them and publicly execute them. I witnessed many executions,” Zurab added.
…
