CNN released a video from the Islamic State on Friday showing that young children are being recruited at schools to join the Islamic State’s jihad camps, in which they learn at a very young age how to treat ‘infidels’ and are ordered to watch the violent punishments that these ‘infidels’ would receive.
Among several clips that the video compiled together was an interview with Mohammed, who was part of the jihad camp for a month when he was only 13. His name has been changed out safety concerns.
He recounted to CNN the things they did at the camp.
“For 30 days we woke up and jogged, had breakfast, then learned the Quran and the Hadith of the Prophet,” he said. “Then we took courses on weapons, Kalashnikovs, and other light military stuff.”
Children also had to take oaths of allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State.
Mohammed explained that while some of the soldiers were kind and joked with the younger soldiers, some forced them to watch as they punished “infidels.”
“When we go to the mosque, they order us to come the next day at a specific time and place to [watch] heads cut off, lashings or stonings,” he said.
“We saw a young man who did not fast for Ramadan, so they crucified him for three days, and we saw a woman being stoned [to death] because she committed adultery.”
Mohammed and his family have now fled to Turkey, and is considering his options on what to do.
Another clip in the video featured a young boy who looked younger than 5 years old answering the question, “What would you like to tell the infidels?”
“Infidels… you are to be killed,” the boy says.
The United Nations Human Rights Council recently released a report specifically about the violence occurring in Syria, in which they also acknowledge the various violations of children’s rights that are occurring. The Council wrote about their awareness of the training camps.
“ISIS has established training camps to recruit children into armed roles under the guise of education,” the report reads. “According to an account about an ISIS training camp in Al-Bab (Aleppo), ISIS actively recruited children from the ages of 14 to 15 to undergo the same training as adults, offering financial rewards.”
The report further explained that these children were deployed to be a part of the conflicts that ISIS partakes in, which includes suicide-bombing missions.
“In the recruitment and use of children under 18, ISIS has violated international humanitarian and human rights law. In using children below the age of 15, the group has committed a war crime,” the Council wrote.
