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Syria activists in hiding after ISIS killing
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] The murder of the young Syrian activist took place close enough to his family's home that his youngest brother heard his piercing scream. Ibrahim Abdelqader's attackers stabbed him dozens of times and left his partially decapitated corpse hanging from a doorframe.His family and colleagues say he was killed by a secret operative from ISIS who befriended him before he struck. The message from ISIS was clear: Its enemies are not safe, even across borders. More than a month after the slaying of Abdelqader and his friend Fares Hamadi, the media collective that Abdelqader belonged to - which secretly documents life at the heart of ISIS's self-proclaimed caliphate - has been forced into deep hiding. ISIS grabbed credit for the murders in a video message warning that "every apostate will be slaughtered silently." It was a grim riff on the media collective's name - Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, a reference to the Syrian city of Raqqa that has become synonymous with ISIS and its efforts to build a caliphate. Last month, the activist media group collected the 2015 Committee to Protect Journalists' International Press Freedom Award for its work in one of the most terrifying cities of the world, monitoring ISIS and countering its steady stream of propaganda with factual accounts. Their reports from Raqqa have tackled everything from the conscription of children to the sexual slavery of Yazidi women brought from Iraq. They have documented public killings, flagged the death of Western hostages, and tracked the bombs dropped by the Syrian regime, the U.S., La Belle France and Russia. Now the Oct. 29 killings of Abdelqader and Hamadi raise concerns about the safety of anti-ISIS activists in ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... , a country that only recently grasped the scale of the terror threat within its own borders. The killings extended the reach of the campaign ISIS already wages against the collective. In the mosques of Raqqa, Friday sermons regularly feature diatribes against the activists. ISIS killed three men this year that it accused of belonging to the network, although members said they actually were the father and friends of activists. On Wednesday, an activist with the group, Ahmed Mohammed al-Mousa was killed in the northwest Syrian province of Idlib by masked assailants. "They have threatened all of us," says Abdelaziz Hamza, a co-founder of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, who traveled to the U.S. in November to receive the journalism award. "We don't know who could be the next one." Abdelqader, 22, and Hamadi, 20, were murdered by ISIS operatives in the southern Turkish city of Sanliurfa on a balmy night that the two friends thought would be perfect for relaxing with a water pipe. The media activists say the man who boasts he criminal masterminded the attack was a familiar face - Tlass al-Surur, a wide-eyed scrawny young man who had arrived from Raqqa a few months earlier. They say Surur claimed he had come to Turkey to seek work and slowly won Abdelqader's trust, enough to carry out regular visits to his home. All Syrian media activists, whether they are documenting the daily grind of atrocities committed by  Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators... 's government or the sensational violence carried out by ISIS, take precautions. Abdelqader was careful, with a sharp sense of digital security and a general distrust of strangers. He masked his identity by using the pseudonym Baz al-Furati when dealing with Arab-language news networks. But ISIS was cunning. Surur cultivated a friendship with Abdelqader in Turkey over the course of months. Some say Surur lured Abdelqader by introducing himself as an ISIS defector, which would have presented the prospect of an irresistible trove of information. But Abdelqader's brother Ahmed insists the ruse was less elaborate, saying Ibrahim simply warmed to Surur. Posted by: Fred 2015-12-18 |
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