The Islamic State kills a young Israeli Arab claiming “he was a Mossad spy". He had deserted the jihad
by Paul Dakiki
The "Executioner" was a 12 year old boy. The young 19 year-old had fled from Neve Yaakov, near East Jerusalem, to join the IS. His father said that his son wanted to go home. In recent months, at least 120 young people - mostly foreigners - were executed for trying to defect from IS.

Beirut (AsiaNews) - The Islamic State (IS) yesterday posted a video showing a boy shooting  a young Israeli Arab, accused of being a Mossad spy. In the footage, the victim claims to be 19, named Mohammed Said Ismail Musallam and to have been recruited by Israeli intelligence.

Wearing the orange jumpsuit of those sentenced to death, the young man is on his knees in front of a boy believed to be around 12 years of age and a bearded man. The man, speaking in French, threatens the Jews of France; then the child goes in front of the young man with a gun and shoots him in the forehead. The boy cries "Allah Akbar!" (God is great) and then fires four shots into the lifeless body of the young man.

Musallam's father, interviewed several weeks ago by AFP, denied that his son was a spy. "My son is innocent," he said. "IS accused him of working for Mossad because he tried to run away".

Said Musallam, the father, was born in the West Bank, but his four children have an Israeli passport. The whole family lives near the Israeli settlement of Neve Yaakov, in the area of ​​East Jerusalem.

The father said that the young man had stopped his service as a firefighter to go to Syria and join the IS. The young man was not "religious", but was groomed and recruited via internet.

The father said he had spoken recently with his son while he was in Raqqa, the "capital of the Islamic caliphate", in northern Syria. His son told him he wanted to return home after completing basic training.

It is not the first time that IS has executed anyone daring to leave the organization. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (Osdh), an organization based in London, published the news that on 7 March nine IS members killed each other in a shoot out to prevent the escape of a group of militants to Turkey.

The clash took place near the town of Al-Bab, about 30 km south of the Turkish border. There were nine European jihadists and one Tunisian among the fugitives who had managed to escape from a prison, where they were being held following a previous attempt to flee abroad, leaving the armed struggle.

In the clash, five fugitives and four fighters were killed; the other five fugitives were recaptured.

According Osdh, in the last two months of 2014, the IS executed more than 120 members, mostly foreigners, who wanted to desert their cause and return to their countries of origin.