The Islamic State has posted a video ostensibly showing a child executing a 19-year-old Israeli Arab accused of joining the terror group in order to spy on it for Israel.
The video shows Muhammad Said Ismail Musallam wearing an orange jumpsuit and "confessing" in front of a French-speaking fighter and a boy described as a "cub of the Caliphate" to spying for the Mossad.The boy is then seen executing Musallam by shooting him in the head several times.
French experts believe that the older IS fighter shown in the video is Sabri Essid, the stepbrother of Mohammed Merah, who in March 2012 struck at a Jewish school in Toulouse, killing four people, and who also murdered several French soldiers a few days before that. The boy is apparently Essid's nephew.
In the 13-minute-long video Muhammad Musallam describes being recruited by security services and then sent to Syria to get information such as the location of Islamic State weapons and the names of Palestinian jihadis with Israeli citizenship. "They detained me and interrogated me," Musallam says. "During the interrogations I confessed that I was a spy."
The film shows Musallam re-enacting his training and discussing how much he would be paid to spy on the IS. He also warns anyone else spying on the extremist group that they too will be captured and punished. A young boy is then seen leading him by the back of his neck through grass in slow motion, before the camera pans out to show the boy and a militant, both dressed in camouflage, kneeling behind their victim.
In the second half of the video Musallam is marched into a field by Isis soldiers including the young boy, referred to as one of the Isis "cubs of the caliphate." An older man speaking in French refers to the kosher supermarket massacre in Paris, saying: "Oh Jews, indeed Allah has gifted us with killing your followers in your own stronghold in France."
After the older man refers to spies and Allah, the boy walks to the front of the hostage and points his gun. He appears to shoot several times, though there has been speculation the trigger may have been pulled by an older figure. The death is shown in extreme close-up and extreme slow-motion.
The video then shows the young boy standing over the dead man, while behind him Jerusalem's skyline appears with a voice-over saying: "And our eyes are on Jerusalem." The video then again shows the father and brother of the executed Israeli Arab, as well as a number of others described as Mossad spies, apparently showing the location of their homes.
French speaking terrorist then issues threats against Jews after condemning Musallam as an “evil apostate spy”. The boy is then led in front of Muhammad Musallam and seen shooting him in the head.
Musallam's parents wept at their home in east Jerusalem when they learned of their son's death, and accused the terrorists of forcing Muhammad to say he was a spy before killing him just for show. "They took him as a victim, only to show the world, so the world would be afraid of them," Muhammad's father Said Musallam told the 'Reuters' new agency.
He denied that his son had been a spy, but had gone missing while on a tourist trip to Turkey, and had been trying to return home when he was captured by the Islamic State group.
"Muhammad was told by them to say about himself that he works for the Israelis," Said Musallam said. "They took him as a victim, only to show the world, so the world would be afraid of them."
Israel's Foreign Ministry declined to react to the video. Israel's Shin Bet internal security agency said that it announced earlier this year that Muhammed Musallam had left for Turkey to fight with the Islamic State.
