Boko
Haram, the Islamist extremist group already blamed for numerous
horrific attacks in West Africa, posted a graphic video online Monday
showing the apparent beheadings of two men who the group said were
suspected spies.
The six-minute
video shows two men with their arms tied to their backs. They are made
to face the camera on their knees, with another man towering over one of
them brandishing a knife.
The
knife-wielding man reaches toward the throat of one of the kneeling men,
then the video switches scenes to show what appear to be the bloody
severed heads of the two men placed on their headless bodies.
The
SITE Intelligence group, which monitors extremist activities, released a
translated transcript from the video, including what SITE called an
"interrogation" of one of the two men. The man identifies himself as a
farmer from the Nigerian town of Baga. He says he was told by a
policeman that if he provided information about "the residents who live
in here ... I will become rich and never go back to be a farmer again."
The apparent beheadings then follow on the
video. SITE said the video, which included Arabic, English and French
subtitles, was posted online via Twitter and "borrows certain elements
from productions" of beheadings by ISIS.
The video was posted by the media division of Boko Haram, SITE said.
Violent beheading videos
Although
this is the first purported beheading video Boko Haram posted online.
the group has previously issued more detailed and extremely violent
beheading videos directly to journalists through intermediaries. Unlike
the video posted Monday, previous ones have shown the actual
decapitations.
In October 2014, Boko
Haram handed out a 10-minute video showing the decapitation of a
Nigerian military pilot the group said it had seized a month earlier
after shooting down his fighter jet during a mission against Boko Haram
in northeast Nigeria.
In April 2014,
the Islamist group released 16-minute video showing what it said was the
beheading of a soldier its fighters captured in a battle in Sambisa
forest, the group's main enclave.
In
February 2014, another video showing the beheading of an alleged
informant who led the military to a Boko Haram camp in Sambisa forest
during an offensive was issued by the group.
And in February 2010, Boko Haram released a 12-minute video in which two policemen were beheaded in an undisclosed location.
Those
videos all ended with a speech from an "executioner" warning that the
group would carry out similar punishment for anyone it captures
supporting the Nigerian government against it.
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