The ISIS video showing a child shooting a prisoner in head has sent waves of shock around the world. The man who was killed has been identified as Muhammad Musallam, an Israeli citizen. In the video, while kneeling in front of a man and a boy who also faced the camera, Musallam confessed to being a spy for the Israeli government. Shortly after his statement, the man issues a command and the child steps forward to shoot Musallam in the back of his head.
Muhammad Musallam’s parents and brother have denied his involvement in Mossad , as has the Israeli government in the past. Musallam, 19, is reported to have travelled to Syria without telling his family. His father claims that his son was lured to Syria by ISIS’s promises of women and cars. CNN quotes Said Musallam, Muhammad’s father, as saying the following.
“Mohamed told me and his brother that ISIS took him. They sent him money through the Western Union. They said you will have girls, money, cars, villas, paradise, but afterwords he discovered that there is nothing.”
The child in the video may be a French citizen. Al Arabiya News reports that French authorities are investigating the child’s links to Mohamed Merah, who killed seven people in March, 2012. The man in the video with him is suspected to be Sabri Essid, who also a French citizen and is Mohamed Merah’s half-brother. French authorities are trying to determine if the child in the video is Essid’s son.
Child soldiers have been used in ISIS propaganda videos before in an effort to attract more young fighters, but ISIS is marketing itself through video and social media to many different types of people, not just children. Apparently, ISIS is producing sign-language videos, as well.
ISIS release sign-language video in bid to recruit deaf fighters— http://t.co/7R4cGcgnhO pic.twitter.com/0sEDGxc2dJ
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) March 10, 2015
More children are being coerced or indoctrinated into ISIS dogma as the group takes over additional territory. Using free education programs and other social incentives, ISIS is reportedly growing its army of fighters and suicide bombers with ever-younger children. This raises a new question for the international community: who is the victim and who is the criminal? Some people on social media already have decided.
In an #ISIS video, a child shoots a prisoner dead. In this picture you see a criminal. And two victims. pic.twitter.com/Ub4R4EplpO
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) March 11, 2015
What do you think about the ISIS video that showed the child shooting Muhammad Musallam in the head? Is the child as much a victim as Musallam?
[Image: Daily Caller ]