Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) jihadists crucified two boys in Syria for “not fasting” in observance of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, reported U.K.-based monitor group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).
“SOHR had been informed that [ISIS] ‘crucified’ 2 boys under the age of 18 on the wall of al- Hesbah office in al- Bo Kamal Street in the city of al- Mayadin [in Syria’s Deir Ezzor province], where IS militants hanged 2 signs on their neck that ‘not fasting in Ramadan,’” said the monitor group on Monday.
Quoting al-Mayadin residents, the observatory’s founder Rami Abdel Rahman reportedly said the children’s bodies were “suspended from a crossbar” near the headquarters of the so-called ISIS religious police.
“Apparently, they were caught eating,” Rahman told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Monday, noting that the placards hung around their necks claimed the two boys violated the Ramadan fast “with no religious justification.”
“The children have been suspended by ropes from a pole since noon, and they were still there in the late evening,” he added.
Muslims abstain from eating, drinking, smoking, and having sex until sundown during the month of Ramadan, which began last Thursday.
ISIS has imposed strict Islamic law, sharia, in the territory it has captured, which includes large swathes of Iraq and Syria.
The Independent noted that “according to the Muslim Council of Britain, the requirement for Muslims to abstain from taking food, water of sexual relations from sunrise to sunset during the month does not apply to children, pregnant women, the ill, elderly or people who are travelling.”
On Tuesday, the observatory reported that ISIS had crucified three “young men” after executing them in the town of al-Kasra.
Like the city of al-Mayadin, al-Kasra is part of the ISIS-controlled territory in Syria’s Deir Ezzor province.
It was not immediately clear why the young men were killed.
ISIS has published a penal code that lists “a set of fixed punishments” that apply to the residents of its territories in Iraq and Syria, including “death and crucifixion” for murder and stealing.
“But ‘crucifixions’ by ISIS have been reported extensively since the group’s advance last year and the gruesome punishment appears to have been used for several alleged crimes,” reported The Independent.
“ISIS militants do not appear to crucify people by nailing or tying them to a cross as a method of execution, but use crosses and bars to pose bodies after people have been killed to terrorise civilians in their territories,” it added.
A report issued in February by the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child, a watchdog committee, revealed that ISIS had been responsible for “several cases of mass executions of boys, as well as reports of beheadings, crucifixions of children and burying children alive.”
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, in March, reported that ISIS had established Sharia courts in Mosul, Iraq, where people were being sentenced to “crucifixion” for banditry.
Other sentences handed down by ISIS in Mosul included stoning and amputation for minor and unproven crimes, noted The Independent.
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