Security forces capture ISIS executioner who threw gay men off buildings
Security forces in Iraq have captured a ISIS executioner who was notorious for homophobic murders.
Thousands of LGBT people have been displaced in Iraq and Syria, as the terrorist group known as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria)
continues to actively target and execute gay men.
The terrorist group has taunted the West with a string of ‘death to gays’ execution videos, showing men accused of homosexuality being thrown off buildings and pelted with stones.
One of the ISIS executioners who most aggressively targeted gay people was captured this week.
Abu Omer, a senior jihadi executioner known as ‘White Beard’, had ruled the city of Mosul with an iron fist until the city was retaken by security forces last year.
Devastation in city of Mosul after battles with ISIS (Pgoro bt AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images)
The terrorist had remained in Mosul, hiding out in a safe house to evade detection.
But according to The Times, he was arrested on January 1 after officials were tipped off about his hiding place in the city.
Pictures in local media confirmed the arrest of a man who appears to be Omer.
But US Lieutenant General Paul Funk, the officer commanding the coalition troops in Iraq warned that the “repressive ideology” of ISIS continues to thrive issue in the region.
He added: “The conditions remain present for Daesh to return, and only through coalition and international efforts can the defeat become permanent.”
Iraqi forces liberate areas held by ISIS (Photo by AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images)
A recent report from the Human Rights Campaign highlighted how men alleged to have sex with men are hunted down by ISIS, targeted on social media and subjected to extreme violence.
Among the vicious attacks: ISIL has tied nooses around these men’s necks and dragged them behind trucks, burned them alive, thrown them off buildings and stoned them to death.
The report states: “ISIL has unleashed a reign of terror against civilians and vulnerable minorities living in areas it has seized, including barbarous violence against LGBTQ people.
“ISIL’s extreme ideology is interpreted by its followers to require the death penalty for those who engage in sexual relations outside of heterosexual marriage, including same-sex sexual relations.”
(Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)
Responding to reported executions of gay men by ISIS last year, Stonewall said: “The reports coming out of Iraq and Syria are horrific and yet another reminder of the dangers posed by ISIS to anyone who doesn’t conform to their view of the world.
“ISIS are not just a threat to gay people, but a whole range of groups who simply seek to exercise their fundamental human right to be themselves.”
Mosul, which has been occupied by the so-called Islamic State since June 2014, has been central to the group’s homophobic propaganda campaign.
An Iraqi member of the Counter-Terrorism Services (CTS) wearing a superman T-shirt walks in the Old City of Mosul on July 3, 2017 during an ongoing offensive to retake the city from Islamic State (Photo by FADEL SENNA/AFP/Getty Images)
Many of the group’s ‘death to gays’ execution videos that have reverberated around the world were filmed in Mosul.
The gory clips, dozens of which have been released over several years, feature men accused of homosexuality being thrown from rooftops in the city.
