17-Year Old Boy Publicly Crucified By ISIS Militants For Taking Photographs Of Them

Islamic State (ISIS) militants have publicly crucified and murdered a teenager they accused of taking photographs of the terror group's headquarters in Syria. Sickening images purportedly taken in the central square of the extremists' de facto capital Raqqa show the battered and bloodstained body of an unnamed 17-year old boy strapped to a cross. A handwritten placard hangs around the teenager's neck, accusing him of 'apostasy' - the abandonment of his religion and says he had been crucified for being caught receiving 500 Turkish lira for every photograph he took of an Islamic State military base. 
The image of the murdered teenager appeared on a social media account of an activist group known as Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently.

Charlie Winter, programs officer at counter-extremism think tank theQuilliam Foundation, said crucifixion is a prescribed punishment meted out by Isis for specific crimes. 'Crucifixion has been used many times before – it's an age-old punishment dealt out to people who have committed treason,' he toldThe Independent. 

The Islamic State's use of crucifixion as a punishment stems from its fundamentalist interpretation of Verse 33 of the fifth book of the Koran. The verse reads: 'Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] corruption is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land. That is for them a disgrace in this world; and for them in the Hereafter is a great punishment.'
Despite this, ISIS chooses to ignore the next passage which emphasises forgiveness and removes the imperative to use such a punishment, saying: 'Except for those who return [repenting] before you apprehend them. And know that Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.' 

Credits: The Independent / MailOnline