Four Azerbaijanis arrested by IS in Raqqa appear in new video

The men, two of whom speak in Azeri and two in accented Russian, look frightened and give what appear to be forced "confessions” -- possibly read from a script -- about their part in the alleged plot.

In the video, shared on social media on December 21, the first Russian-speaking man, named as Abu Maryam, says that he and others considered "this nation” (a reference to local Syrians) "mushriks” (polytheists). Abu Maryam said that he and his fellow conspirators wanted to kill them and appropriate their property.

"We also considered [Islamic State] to be infidels because they didn’t make takfir (the practice of a Muslim declaring another Muslim an apostate) with the people but considered them brothers. And we considered [IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi] a mushrik because he collected zakat (a mandatory duty payable by Muslims) from the local mushriks,” Abu Maryam says.

The same message is given by the second Russian-speaker, an older man, who says that he and his comrades "started to fight IS and the locals because we considered them to be mushriks.”

"I also want to add that we also found Sheikhs Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Adnani mushriks because they addressed the Syrian and Iraqi people as their brothers,” the man, named as Abu Yakub, says.

 Abu Yakub says that he and others plotted with their leader, who told them to fight IS and take their weapons. The video ends by quoting a verse from the Koran that

talks about execution as a punishment for those who "wage war against God.”

It is not known exactly how many Azerbaijanis are fighting in Syria, but estimates in news reports have ranged from 200 to 300. The largest group of Azerbaijani militants in Syria is likely fighting for the Islamic State (IS) group. In May, Muhammad al-Azeri, the leader of an Azerbaijani IS faction in Raqqa, said in a video message that IS was on the "correct path of jihad" in Syria.

Though Abu Yakub, the older man shown in the Islamic State video, does not appear to fit the profile of other militants from Azerbaijan and other former Soviet states fighting in Syria, a Washington D.C.-based analyst who blogs under the name North Caucasus Caucus told RFE/RL that there are several examples of older Azerbaijani foreign fighters in Syria.

These include two members of the group known as the Karabakh Partisans -- Rustem Askerov, who was killed in January and who had fought in Chechnya, and Rovshan Badalov, who was killled in Kobani in October. Members of the so-called Karabakh Partisans were arrested in Azerbaijan in 2004 on suspicion of planning a paramilitary jihad to liberate the Karabakh region from Armenia.

"Many arrived early on in the conflict and were veterans of other conflicts, mainly in the North Caucasus. Chechnya had a high participation for Azerbaijanis. No one has good numbers, but it was likely in the hundreds,” North Caucasus Caucus told RFE/RL.

The video showing the four Azerbaijani men comes after reports via activists that Islamic State militants executed as many as 100 of their own members, most if not all foreign fighters, in Raqqa. Other activists in Raqqa denied that a mass execution had taken place.

 

(RFE/RL)