ISIS Militant ‘Kills His Own Mother’ in Public Raqqa Execution

Her “crime” was to try to save her son. Newsweek:

A member of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) killed his own mother in a public execution in the city of Raqqa on Thursday, according to activists.

The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which monitors the Syrian civil war using a wide network of sources on the ground, and Raqqa is Being Silently Slaughtered, an activist group inside the ISIS-held city, both reported the execution.

Ali Saqr, 20, reportedly killed his 45-year-old mother Leena Al-Qasem “for apostasy” in front of an audience of hundreds of people outside a post office building where she was employed in the city.

SOHR activists reported that she was killed under the pretext of “inciting her son to leave the Islamic State and escaping together to the outside of Al-Raqqah, and that the coalition will kill all members of the organization,” in reference to the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition conducting air strikes on the group in Syria and Iraq.

Activists reported that after Al-Qasem persuaded her son to leave the city, he identified her to the group who subsequently arrested her. It is unclear whether Saqr shot her dead on the group’s orders or of his own volition.