According to a report by the Kurdish news agency Rudaw, the Islamic State executed at least 24 people in its Iraqi stronghold of Mosul on Monday, including its own finance minister.
“On Monday ISIS executed 24 persons charged with refusing to fight for the group on the battlefields,” Saeed Mamuzni, an official of the Kurdish PDK party, told Rudaw. “Two hundred and thirteen other civilians were also detained by ISIS in Mosul.”
“Ahmed Abdulsalam al-Obeidi the finance minister of ISIS’s Mosul Wilayat was among the executed who were charged with treachery against the group,” Mamuzni added.
The UK Independent says eight of the alleged deserters were Dutch recruits who feuded with ISIS leadership. Three more Dutch jihadis were arrested by the terror state and accused of planning to flee, with one of them dying from an acute case of interrogation.
Tensions between the roughly 75 Dutch and Moroccan-Dutch recruits and ISIS officials in Iraq are said to be running high, high enough for the unhappy Dutch campers to murder a delegate from the Islamic State high command. ISIS retaliated by ordering the entire Dutch contingent arrested.
Details about these arrests and executions came from the citizen-journalist group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, which did not have details of the “treachery” supposedly committed by al-Obeidi, the late finance minister.
ISIS is evidently cracking down on corruption, as the terror state recently executed a Tunisian and two Algerian members on such charges in Syria, according to Middle East Eye.
“The three men, who were reported to be members of IS’s Islamic police force, were shot dead and their bodies crucified after being convicted by an IS court for receiving bribe,” said the report.
Middle East Eye notes ISIS is also treating deserters harshly, following its reversals of fortune in Iraq, including the loss of the captured city of Ramadi, and the destruction of Mosul’s main bank by American airstrikes, which dramatically lowered the morale of ISIS fighters.