ISIL executes female citizen journalist who refused to flee Syria

Special to WorldTribune.com

Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) executed a female journalist who had chronicled daily life in the terror group’s de facto Syrian capital.

The anti-ISIL activist group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently reported that 30-year-old journalist Ruqia Hassan, who wrote under the pseudonym Nissan Ibrahim, was executed by ISIL jihadists in September. News of Hassan’s murder in Raqqa was confirmed this week by the activist group following ISIL claims on social media that she was still alive.

Ruqia Hassan
Ruqia Hassan

Hassan studied philosophy at Aleppo University and in 2011 joined the student-led uprising in Raqqa against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Along with detailing life under ISIL’s brutal rule in Raqqa, she also wrote about U.S.-led coalition air strikes against ISIL, the UK’s Guardian reported.

“Okay if we don’t want Daesh [an Arabic term for ISIL], and we don’t want the coalition bombing Daesh, and we don’t want the Free Syria[n] Army to fight Daesh…Then what do we want exactly?” Hassan wrote last summer.

Hassan refused to leave Raqqa when ISIL seized the city in the summer of 2013. She later wrote that the jihadists had sought to cut off communication between residents of Raqqa and their friends and families outside the city by taking over Internet cafes.

Hassan was placed under surveillance by ISIL and, in August 2015, was arrested after being accused of being in contact with the anti-Assad Free Syrian Army.

The journalist’s presence on social media ended abruptly in July 2015, the Independent reported.