A beheading video is a video which depicts a live murder in which a hostage or victim is shown to be graphically decapitated, or the head is displayed in the aftermath. Such videos are typically distributed mostly through the Internet, [1] and are often employed by groups seeking to instill shock or terror into a population. Although beheading has been a widely employed public execution method since the ancient Greeks and Romans, [2] videos of this type only began to arise in 2002 with the beheading of Daniel Pearl and the growth of the Internet in the Information Age, which allowed groups to anonymously publish these videos for public consumption. The beheadings shown in these videos are usually not performed in a "classical" method – decapitating a victim quickly with a blow from a sword or axe – but by the relatively slow and torturous process of slicing and sawing the victim's neck, while still alive, with a knife. [3]
The first beheading by the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty was of Daniel Pearl in 2002. [4] The videos were popularized in 2004 by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a radical Islamic militant. [5]
The videos caused controversy among Islamic scholars, some of whom denounced them as against Islamic law; al-Qaeda did not approve and Osama bin Laden considered them poor public relations. Regardless, they became popular with certain Islamic terrorist groups, such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. [6]
Early videos were grainy and unsophisticated, but, according to the Chicago Sun-Times , had by 2004 been "growing in sophistication, using animated graphics and editing techniques apparently aimed at embellishing the audio to make a victim's final moments seem more disturbing". [7] These videos are often uploaded to the Internet by terrorists, then discussed and distributed by web-based outlets, [8] such as blogs, shock sites, and traditional journalistic media. In 2013, a beheading video by a Mexican drug cartel spread virally on Facebook. The non-profit organization Family Online Safety Institute petitioned Facebook to remove the video. [9] Initially, Facebook refused. [10] They later complied, [11] and subsequently clarified their policies, stating that beheading videos would only be allowed if posted in a manner intended for its users to "condemn" the acts. [12]
Writing in The Atlantic , Simon Cottee drew a comparison between jihadist videos and gonzo pornography. [13]
A hoax beheading video filmed by Benjamin Vanderford, Robert Martin, and Laurie Kirchner in 2004 received wide attention from the American press. [72] The video used Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad's logo, but not the group's flag. It was originally filmed for Vanderford's local election campaign. [73] He was seeking Matt Gonzalez's seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. [74] Vanderford's second intention was to point out how uncritically the mainstream media would accept an anonymous video. [75] The Islamic Global Media Center claimed to have made the video, but removed it from their website after the hoax was discovered. [76] The video also appeared on other militant websites and was broadcast on Arabic television. [77] [78]
Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, abbreviated as JTJ or Jama'at, was a Salafi jihadist militant group. It was founded in Jordan in 1999, and was led by Jordanian national Abu Musab al-Zarqawi for the entirety of its existence. During the Iraqi insurgency (2003–11), the group became a decentralized network with foreign fighters with a considerable Iraqi membership.
The Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and by its Arabic acronym Daesh, is a transnational Salafi jihadist group and a former unrecognised quasi-state. Its origins were in the Jai'sh al-Taifa al-Mansurah organization founded by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi in 2004, which fought alongside al-Qaeda during the Iraqi insurgency. The group gained global prominence in 2014, when its militants successfully captured large territories in northwestern Iraq and eastern Syria, taking advantage of the ongoing Syrian civil war. By the end of 2015, it ruled an area with an estimated population of twelve million people, where it enforced its extremist interpretation of Islamic law, managed an annual budget exceeding US$1 billion, and commanded more than 30,000 fighters.
Following the outbreak of the protests of Syrian revolution during the Arab Spring in 2011 and the escalation of the ensuing conflict into a full-scale civil war by mid-2012, the Syrian Civil War became a theatre of proxy warfare between various regional powers such as Turkey and Iran. Spillover of the Syrian civil war into the wider region began when the Iraqi insurgent group known as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) started intervening in the conflict from 2012.
The following is a timeline of the Syrian civil war from August to December 2014. Information about aggregated casualty counts is found at Casualties of the Syrian Civil War.
The persecution of Christians by the Islamic State involves the systematic mass murder of Christian minorities, within the regions of Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Libya controlled by the Islamic terrorist group Islamic State. Persecution of Christian minorities climaxed following the Syrian civil war and later by its spillover.
James Wright Foley was an American journalist and video reporter. While working as a freelance war correspondent during the Syrian Civil War, he was abducted on November 22, 2012, in northwestern Syria. He was murdered by decapitation in August 2014 purportedly as a response to American airstrikes in Iraq, thus becoming the first American citizen killed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Mohammed Emwazi was a British militant of Kuwaiti origin seen in several videos produced by the Islamist extremist group Islamic State (IS) showing the beheadings of a number of captives in 2014 and 2015. A group of his hostages nicknamed him "John" since he was part of a four-person terrorist cell with English accents whom they called 'The Beatles'; the press later began calling him "Jihadi John".
Beginning in 2014, a number of people from various countries were beheaded by the Islamic State (IS), a radical Sunni Jihadist group operating in Iraq and Syria as well as elsewhere. In January 2014, a copy of an IS penal code surfaced describing the penalties it enforces in areas under its control, including multiple beheadings. Beheading videos have been frequently posted by IS members to social media. Several of the recorded beheadings were conducted by Mohammed Emwazi, whom the media referred to as "Jihadi John" before his identification. The beheadings received wide coverage around the world and attracted international condemnation. Political scientist Max Abrahms posited that IS may be using well-publicized beheadings as a means of differentiating itself from Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and identifying itself with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al-Qaeda member who beheaded Daniel Pearl. The publicised beheadings represent a small proportion of a larger number of total people killed following capture by IS.
"The Beatles" was the nickname for an Islamic State terrorist group composed of four British militants. The group was named by their hostages after the English rock group The Beatles, who referred to the members as "John", "Paul", "George", and "Ringo".
David Haines was a British aid worker who was captured by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in early 2013 and beheaded in early September 2014.
Lavdrim Muhaxheri, also known by the nom de guerreAbu Abdullah al Kosova, was a Kosovar Albanian Islamic State (IS) leader and recruiter of ethnic Albanian jihadi foreign fighters fighting in Syria and in Iraq. A former KFOR and NATO employee, he became an extremist and left for Syria in late 2012. He appeared in several propaganda videos, calling Albanians to join jihad, and uploaded photographs of himself appearing to decapitate a man, as well as a video where he kills a captive with a rocket. On 24 September 2014, the U.S. Department of State designated Muhaxheri as a global terrorist.
Executions by ISIS refers here to killing by beheading, immolation, shooting, or other means of soldiers and civilians by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). ISIL has released a number of propaganda/publicity videos of beheadings or shootings of captives. Houtat Sulūk is reported to be a mass grave.
The portrayal of ISIL in American media has largely been negative. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has been linked in the American media to several atrocities throughout the Middle East. Most recently U.S. coverage has linked ISIL members to burning alive the Royal Jordanian Air Force pilot Muath al-Kasasbeh, the beheadings of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and most recently, because the perpetrator of the June 2016 Orlando mass shooting- America's second deadliest- reportedly pledged allegiance to ISIL and its leader in a phone call to 911 operators just before the incident. The American public was introduced to ISIL with these actions. This contrasts with the renewed prominence of al-Qaeda after the September 11 attacks in the media. That coverage focused on the United States' response to the attacks, while the coverage of ISIL started with the organization itself and evolved to cover America's potential strategy.
The Timeline of the War in Iraq covers the War in Iraq, a war which erupted that lasted in Iraq from 2013 to 2017, during the first year of armed conflict.
In early 2014, the jihadist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant captured extensive territory in Western Iraq in the Anbar campaign, while counter-offensives against it were mounted in Syria. Raqqa in Syria became its headquarters. The Wall Street Journal estimated that eight million people lived under its control in the two countries.
This article contains a timeline of events from January 2015 to December 2015 related to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/ISIS). This article contains information about events committed by or on behalf of the Islamic State, as well as events performed by groups who oppose them.
Collaboration with the Islamic State refers to the cooperation and assistance given by governments, non-state actors, and private individuals to the Islamic State (IS) during the Syrian Civil War, Iraqi Civil War, and Libyan Civil War.
The origins of the Islamic State group can be traced back to three main organizations. Earliest of these was the "Jamāʻat al-Tawḥīd wa-al-Jihād" organization, founded by the Jihadist leader Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi in Jordan in 1999. The other two predecessor organizations emerged during the Iraqi insurgency against the U.S. occupation forces. These included the "Jaish al-Ta'ifa al-Mansurah" group founded by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi in 2004 and the "Jaysh Ahl al-Sunnah wa’l-Jama’ah" group founded by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his associates in the same year.
Foreign fighters in the Syrian civil war have come to Syria and joined all four sides in the war. In addition to Sunni foreign fighters arriving to defend the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or join the Syrian rebels, Shia fighters from several countries have joined pro-government militias in Syria, and leftists have become foreign fighters in the Syrian Democratic Forces.
Extremist Salafi jihadist groups such as ISIS and Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad have used beheading as a method of killing captives. Since 2002, ISIS have circulated beheading videos as a form of terror and propaganda. Their actions have been condemned by militant and other terrorist groups, as well as by mainstream Islamic scholars and organizations.