ISIS has reportedly released a video that confirms that the Paris terrorists trained in Syria; the video shows the men carrying out executions and reinforces the knowledge that they were not merely “inspired” by ISIS.
The Islamic State released a video on Sunday apparently showing footage of the men who carried out the November attacks in Paris while they were in Syria and Iraq, where they are pictured carrying out executions, including beheadings.
If the identities of all of the men in the video are confirmed, it would be the first evidence that the group that killed 130 people in coordinated attacks in Paris on Nov. 13 had been sent from the Islamic State’s base in Syria.
The video makes it clear that the Paris attacks were not just inspired by the Islamic State, but rather carried out by core members of the terrorist group, who had been trained and vetted in Syria before being tapped to carry out attacks on European soil. It also aims to show that the assailants — some of whom had European passports — had been carrying out atrocities in the group’s name long before their return to Europe.
The NYT describes vivid and horrifying scenes from the video.
In the ISIS video released Sunday, seven of the Paris attackers are shown addressing the camera, one by one, on a windswept dune. The youngest of the group, Bilal Hadfi, 20 — who wept when he said goodbye to his mother in Belgium before leaving for Syria last year — is shown with a prisoner kneeling at his feet.
He pushes the man to the ground and beheads him.
Samy Amimour, from the Drancy suburb of Paris whose 67-year-old father traveled to Syria in a failed attempt to retrieve him, smiles as he holds a captive’s head.
And Omar Ismail Mostefai, who detonated a suicide vest inside the Bataclan concert hall, is shown holding another victim by the nape of his neck. “Know that we have received an order from the emir of the Believers to kill you wherever you are,” he says, using the honorific for the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
One of the few attackers who is not shown executing a captive is Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who appears in a room with the ISIS flag.
“We will not stop fighting you in every part of the world regardless of whether you are on a tourism trip or a work trip,” he says in French. “So expect more. Expect a mujahid to show up to kill you.”
The video also includes direct threats to Great Britain and its prime minister, according to the NYT: “The video also states that ISIS has plans to attack Britain. It shows images of politicians, including Prime Minister David Cameron, as they authorize military action against the group.”
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