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Raqqa first public stoning to death of
a woman by ISIS for alleged
adultery. Source: Twitter account |
Fighters from Al-Qaeda-breakaway group the Islamic State have stoned a woman to death for adultery, in the first such execution of its kind in rebel-held northern Syria.
The stoning, first reported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and confirmed to Al Jazeera by two activists, took place in a public square Thursday evening in the town of Tabaqa, Raqqa province. Activists said the woman was tried in an Islamic sharia court, but that witnesses to her alleged offense were never identified and that the man involved was not charged with any crime.
“Mystery surrounds the whole thing,” said Abu Khalil, an activist in Raqqa who runs the anti-Islamic State group
Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, which obtained a cell phone photograph that
purports to depict the incident.
In a tweet, the U.S. Embassy in Syria – which no longer has a presence in the country – condemned the “barbaric” stoning “in the strongest possible terms."
While far from the first instance of Islamic State brutality in Raqqa, the stoning has exacerbated fears the hardline group will govern brutally and without accountability across Syria and Iraq, where it led a coalition of Sunni forces to takeover large swathes of the north and west in a lightning offensive last month.
Raqqa, where the Islamic State established its de facto capital last year, is
widely considered a glimpse of what’s to come in other regions that have fallen under IS control.
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Source: Aljazeera America, July 18, 2014
