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posted by martyb on Monday August 01 2016, @03:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the when-you-DO-NOT-want-them-to-"think-of-the-children!" dept.

A couple of weeks ago this story was reported by The Daily Beast :

Members of an American-backed rebel group in Syria beheaded a young child in a grisly execution video.

The footage surfaced early Tuesday of members of Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki and a captured child in Handarat, near Aleppo. The young boy, who appears to be prepubescent, is then executed on the back of a pickup truck.

The gruesome videotaped murder of a child drew outrage on social media and the promise of an inquiry from the group's leadership, which has previously received U.S.-made weapons and American funding. The group no longer gets such backing. But it's also renewed questions about which rebels the American government has supported in Syria's ongoing civil war.

[...] State Department spokesperson John Kirby told The Daily Beast. "We strongly condemn this type of barbaric action, no matter what group is responsible. We encourage al-Zenki to investigate the incident and expect all parties to comply with their obligations under the law of armed conflict."

[...] the group's leadership issued a statement condemning the beheading. It said it formed a committee to investigate how such a crime could have happened.

More video from the incident has been released:

The victim is seen among a group of fighters from the US and Turkish backed militant group, in the same red pick-up truck that features in their video of his execution. In a chilling exchange the jihadist militants can be seen taunting the child, taking selfies, and threatening him with 'slaughter'.

When asked about his final wish, the child asks to be shot rather than slaughtered. Their shocking answer? "Slaughter. We are even worse than ISIS"


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 01 2016, @04:53PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 01 2016, @04:53PM (#382686)

    We were better off with Qaddafi

    I don't know about that. The dictator was left in place in Syria after a civil war formed, and that's not helping anything. We have one instance where it's a mess with the dictator left in place during a civil war and a case where the dictator was removed during a civil war, still leaving a mess. BOTH cases are messes.

    A more accurate conclusion is that our intervention has had no clear cut benefit such that we probably should stop intervening.

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