ISIS Photo of Baby Lying Beside Gun and Hand Grenade Released; Caption Warns Child Will Grow Into a Threat
A photo believed to have been taken by ISIS members of a baby lying beside a gun, a hand grenade, and an ISIS birth certificate has been released online. The photo's caption warns that the child will grow up to be a threat, pointing to the vast youth indoctrination program that the terror group is running in the region.
"By showing the birth certificate, and the fact that the group are indoctrinating babies, I think ISIS are indicating they will be around for a long time," a terrorism expert at the Australian National University told Daily Mail Australia.
The Independent noted that Abu Ward Al-Raqqawi, an anti-ISIS activist in Syria, originally shared the photo online, and captioned the image with the text "This child will be risk to you not just to us [sic]."
Get Our Latest News for FREE
"It's an interesting signal of life within the caliphate. Obviously by posting opposition to the Islamic State from within their borders the activist is operating with great risk," the terrorism expert added.
While the exact source and purpose of the photo has not been verified, ISIS has released a significant number of photo and videos of its jihadist training camps for youths. Some of the footage, such as a video from March, shows children participating in executions carried out by the jihadists.
The boys in the March video are shown leading out eight Syrian men, before handing out knives for the ISIS militants to carry out the beheadings.
Children have also been shown in training to use lethal weapons and carrying out drills led by ISIS instructors.
The terror group has become known for kidnapping children from the territory it has captured throughout Iraq and Syria, often forcing the girls to work as sex slaves, while sending the boys to its jihadist training camps.
In April, when ISIS seized the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria and trapped close to 18,000 civilians, reports emerged that the militants brutalized families by killing children right in front of their parents.
55-year-old refugee named Abdel Fatah, who managed to escape the camp, later shared some of the horrors of what he saw: "I saw severed heads. They killed children in front of their parents. We were terrorized," he said. "We had heard of the cruelty from the television but when we saw it ourselves … I can tell you, their reputation is well-deserved."
