By Libya Herald reporter.
Benghazi, 16 August 2015:
There are unconfirmed reports that the Islamic State (IS) forces now in control of Sirte’s . . .[restrict]residential district No. 3 have told the families of those they have executed that they cannot bury them in town’s cemetery. A source in the town told this newspaper that the families, to whom the bodies had been returned, have been instructed to bury them in ordinary ground outside Sirte.
IS regularly denounces those opposed to it as apostates who have left Islam. In Sirte, in during the past week, it has particularly denounced those fighting it as Salafists, with the leading IS imam in the town, Hassan Al-Karami describing Salafism as a “cancer” which had to be rooted out. It has also “crucified” a number of those executed – hanging up the bodies and leaving them for public view, a punishment reserved in the thinking of IS and others for apostates and those deemed to have caused discord within the Muslim community. It is also intended to show that those crucified will not enter paradise.
Some of those battling against IS were Salafists although others, many of them members of the Farjan tribe who tried to avenge IS’ murder of Khalid bin Rajab Ferjani, imam the district’s Cordoba mosque, were not necessarily supporters of the movement. The imam was.
His refusal to hand the mosque over to IS is thought to have been the cause for his murder.
Among those executed by IS yesterday, the source said, was a woman named as Khadija Al-Ferjani. He said that when IS forces yesterday broke into her home while carrying out house-to-house raids to catch members of the resistance and see who had arms, the woman started shooting at them, killing an undisclosed number. She was captured alive, the source claimed, but later shot.
Meanwhile, Algeria and Italy (the first western country to do so) have joined in the condemnations of IS’ actions in Sirte. [/restrict]
