By Libya Herald staff.
Tripoli, 19 April 2015:
The Islamic State has released a grisly new video purporting to show the executions in . . .[restrict]Libya of what it calls “worshippers belonging to the hostile Ethiopian church”. Alhough the video has not been verified yet, it is eerily similar to the video of Egyptians who were executed in February.
The 29-minute video, which bore the Islamic State’s Al-Furqan media arm logo, features 25 minutes of propaganda, attempting to justify why Christians are being executed and claiming that Christians living in IS-controlled territories are treated well as long as they abide by certain provisions which include paying special taxes to Islamic authorities. It features short interviews of Christians living under its “protection”.
The video then shows what happens to those who choose not to pay taxes or convert. It switches quickly between scenes of lines of dark-skinned men being marched to their execution spots in two different locations. As in the earlier film of the Egyptians being killed, the IS technicians have played around with images for apparent propaganda purposes, showing the killers as giants compared to their victims.
The latter, thought to be Ethiopian migrants, were being held, the video says, in Fezzan and also in eastern Libya. The video shows at least 16 men being lined up in a desert location and another 12 men, wearing orange jumpsuits, being lined up along a shoreline, perhaps the same beach where they Egyptians were killed.
It also possible that the cuts in the latest video showing the shore executions are taken from the earlier one.
In the video, a masked man brandishing a gun delivers a message, saying the Ethiopians have the choice to pay the taxes, convert to Islam or die. He also warns, “You won’t have safety, even in your dreams, until you embrace Islam.”
Just before the captives are killed the man declares: “The Muslim blood that was shed under the hands of your religion is not cheap.”
The video ends with the execution of the captives. The men in the desert are shot in the head; those along the beach are beheaded.
There had been no previous news of the abduction of this many Ethiopians in Libya. It is not known who they are, where they taken captive or when.
News of the execution comes on the same day that hundreds of African migrants died trying to travel by boat from Libya to Italy.
It is feared that the video will add to the resolve of Ethiopian and other African Christians in Libya to attempt the dangerous Mediterranean crossing. [/restrict]
