ISIS Uses Battle Tank in Savage Execution of Syrian Hostage
The Islamic State terror group in Syria has found yet another new and barbaric way to execute its hostages as the caliphate has released footage showing militants killing an alleged Syrian soldier by crushing his body beneath the continuous track of a battle tank while he is still alive.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights obtained IS' newest execution video last Saturday that purports to show the execution of a Syrian regime soldier who was accused of driving over the dead bodies of IS militants with an army tank.
The video, which according to Heavy.com (WARNING: GRAPHIC VIDEO CONTENT) is titled "And if You Punish [an Enemy, oh Believers], Punish With an Equivalent of That With Which You Were Harmed," was recorded in an IS-controlled area of the Homs province.
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The footage shows the 19-year-old prisoner dressed in an orange jump suit confessing in Arabic to being a Syrian soldier named Fadi Ammar Zidan from the town of Latakia, Syria. While facing the camera, Zidan forced to say he ran over the bodies of deceased IS militants with a Syrian army tank.
"I joined the Army under contract with the air force intelligence," Zidan explained, according to a SOHR translation. "I registered the contract in the airport of Hama, and they sent me to serve in the field of Sha'er and stayed for the seventh month then they sent me to area named Jazl where I remained there four days. Then the Islamic State brought me and I was in Jazl area, and I was a tank driver, and I used a tank to run over bodies of the Islamic State's soldiers."
Following the man's confession, an IS militant, dressed head-to-toe in white, announced that the man's punishment for disrespecting the bodies of dead militants was to be similarly run over with a tank.
"This apostate dirty Nusayri [religious group that follows a branch of Shiite Islam] ran over our brothers who were dead in a tank, so it was decided that he will be run over by the tank while he is alive," SOHR quoted the militant as saying.
After the method of the prisoner's execution was announced, he was handcuffed and placed in the center of a street. A group of militants looked on as a tank came straight toward the shackled prisoner and brutally ran him over, bringing about his demise.
The video shows the prisoner jumping and squirming as the tank gets closer. As it nears him, the tank seems to speed up and quickly flattens the man beneath it's tread.
After the tank completes its course, militants observing the execution begin celebrating in the streets. The video then features a close up of the man's mutilated body, showing blood and brain matter squeezed out into the street as if his body was a tube of toothpaste.
SOHR also reports that the organization was notified in September that IS would begin executing Assad regime soldiers by running them over with army tanks. The execution of Zidan appears to be IS' inaugural run of its new-found style of execution.
In late August, IS released a video showing another of the group's sick execution methods in which four Iraqi men were chained by their hands and feet and hoisted using a swing set-like mechanism. IS militants then lit a line of fuel beneath the men, which burned their bodies alive.
Earlier in that same month, IS released a video showing the execution of 10 men accused of apostasy in Afghanistan. The prisoners were forced to kneel over bombs that were placed in the ground, which were then detonated by the terrorists.
In late September, SOHR issued a report that estimated the militant group had executed over 11,000 people in Iraq and Syria since establishing its self-proclaimed caliphate in June 2014.
