ISIS militant executes His mother in Syria

Ali Saqr, 21, killed his mother, Lena al-Qasem, 45, outside the post office in Raqqa, Syria, eyewitnesses said.

Raqqa has served as IS’ de facto capital since the group captured the city in August 2013.

IS does not tolerate any dissent and imposes brutal punishments, often carried out in public.

The UK-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) and the activist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently reported the incident.

Lena al-Qasem had reportedly told her son that the US-led military alliance fighting IS would “wipe out” the group, and tried to convince him to leave the city with her.

Her son is then said to have informed the group of her comment, and they ordered her killed. Ali Saqr is reported to have shot her outside the post office where she worked, in front of hundreds of people.

IS, a jihadist group which follows its own extreme version of Sunni Islam, took over large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014. Since then the group has killed more than 2,000 people for reasons including homosexuality, and for the alleged practice of magic and apostasy, according to the SOHR.

Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said the woman, who was in her forties, was living in the nearby town of Tabaqa but worked in Raqa city. The incident was widely condemned online by social media users.

Raqa is the de facto Syrian capital of IS’s so-called “caliphate,” the territories it controls in Syria and Iraq where it imposes its harsh interpretations of Islamic law.

Among the crimes that warrant a death sentence in IS territories are homosexuality, “exposing jihadist genitalia,” adultery and intercourse with animals, according to the Observatory. Other acts punishable by death range from blocking roads to “betraying Muslims” and working with anti-IS groups including the “crusader” US-led coalition.

Even capturing and torturing an anti-IS activist or fighter without proper authorisation from jihadist authorities could be met with a death sentence.

But in IS-held territories, using child soldiers and “owning slaves”, which are typically sexually abused, are both legal.

And the extremist group has been accused of carrying out mass killings, torture, rape and sexual slavery.

A US-led coalition has been striking the jihadists in Syria and Iraq for over a year.

More than 260,000 people have been killed in Syria’s war since it erupted in March 2011.