ISIS Child Suicide Bombers Lured to Kill With 'Talk of Heaven'
A 15-year-old would-be suicide bomber for the Islamic State terror group, who was arrested and stopped by police earlier this year in Iraq before he could carry out his mission, has revealed that IS militants try to brainwash young recruits with promises of Heaven.
Mahmoud Ahmed, as the teenager is identified in a Sky News interview, said the moment he realized that what he was about to do was wrong was when he saw that other children would be victims of the bombing as well.
Ahmed, who was arrested in August before he could carry out a bombing at a sports stadium in Iraq, and is now being held at a juvenile detention center on terrorism charges, revealed that IS radicals use various methods to try and brainwash young recruits into carrying out devastating attacks.
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"They taught us how to use a Kalashnikov and a PKC machine gun and then transferred us to Hawija.
"There were four older men who would teach us about Heaven and stuff like that," the young man said.
He added: "Twenty-four hours a day they'd teach us about this stuff. There were 60 of us born from 2002 onwards.
"They would scare us and would show videos of beheadings and stuff like that."
When asked about whether he realized what he was doing was wrong, Ahmed replied: "When I reached the target I knew it was wrong. When I saw the young kids I knew it was wrong immediately.
"I returned back to him (my handler) but he said go straight back. I told him no and he said this is an order from Abu Islam (an IS commander)."
IS has been training thousands of kidnapped children in radical Islamic dogma at its special camps, and has reportedly used many in suicide bombings across Iraq and Syria.
The Combating Terrorism Centre in New York said there were at least 89 confirmed cases of child bombers killed this past year.
Back in November, CNN interviewed a number of captured IS militants who also said they were brainwashed into IS ideology but now no longer support the terror group's actions and beliefs.
"I was a believer. I believed in the caliphate and I believed in the Islamic State," revealed Abdelrahman al-Azy, who acted as an assassin for IS.
"They said the pledge to the caliph is from the days of the [Islamic] prophet [Muhammad] and those who don't pledge are not Muslims. I was convinced by this."
Abdelrahman al-Azy said he now rejects IS' ideology that all non-Muslims should be killed.
"I don't believe in the caliphate anymore. I am of course a Muslim and I still do my prayers. Nothing else has changed in terms of the practice of my faith. But regarding the Islamic State, I don't want anything to do with them," al-Azy added.
