ISIS operatives have executed
two groups of prisoners, believed to be
Ethiopian Christians, in Libya, according
to a video released Sunday by the terror
network's media arm.
The Ethiopian government confirmed
Monday that 30 of its citizens
were
among the two groups, according to the
Ethiopian News Agency .
The al-Furqan Media video -- which is
highly produced and titled "Until There
Came to Them Clear Evidence" -- shows
two groups of men, one in orange
jumpsuits and the other in black, being
killed at different locations in Libya,
according to the video's narrator.
One group is beheaded on a beach along
the Mediterranean Sea, while the other
group is shot in Southern Libya,
hundreds of miles away.
"All praise be to Allah, the Lord and
cherisher of the world and may peace
and blessings be upon the Prophet
Mohammed. To the nation of the cross,
we are back again on the sands, where
the companions of the Prophet, peace be
upon him, have stepped on before, telling
you: Muslim blood that was shed under
the hands of your religion is not cheap,"
the narrator says in Arabic on the 39-
minute video.
The narrator continues, "In fact, their
blood is the purest blood because there
is a nation behind them (which) inherits
revenge. And we swear to Allah: the one
who disgraced you by our hands, you
will not have safety, even in your dreams,
until you embrace Islam."
Quoting Mohammed, the narrator says
that those who "perform prayer and pay
alms" will have "their blood and property"
protected by the Prophet unless Islam
dictates otherwise.
"You pay (tax) with willing submission,
feeling yourselves subdued. Our battle is
a battle between faith and blasphemy,
between truth and falsehood, until there
is no more polytheism -- and obedience
becomes Allah's on its entirety," the
narrator says.
Earlier in the video, a different speaker
says Christians in the northern Iraqi city
of Mosul were given the choice to
embrace Islam or maintain their Christian
faith and pay a htax.
"The Islamic state has offered the
Christian community this many times and
set a deadline for this, but the Christians
never cooperated," the speaker says.
At the beginning of the video, a man who
appears to be a judge in a court
enforcing Islam's Sharia law holds up
documents and says a Syrian Christian
had owed a Syrian Muslim 550,000 Syrian
pounds (about $2,900) since 2004, but
the Muslim was unable to obtain the
money under President Bashar al-Assad's
regime.
"After applying to the Islamic court he got
his money back within one month," the
man says.
The law cited throughout the video
comes from the Quran's Surah 9:29,
whose exact translation is an area of
dispute among religious scholarus . The
gist is that Muslims are commanded to
fight those who don't believe in Allah or
the Last Day (Islam's equivalent of
Judgment Day) unless the nonbelievers
pay a tax or tribute.
In February, ISIS released a video of 21
Coptic Christians from Egypt being
executed on a Libyan beach. Those
captives, too, wore orange jumpsuits.
In that video, released by al-Hayat Media
Center, another ISIS media arm, a masked
man references the killing of Osama bin
Laden and his burial at sea.
"The sea you have hidden Sheikh Osama
bin Laden's body in, we swear to Allah,
we will mix it with your blood," he
threatens in English.
CNN's Anas Hamdan, Christine
Theodorou and Brian Walker contributed
to this report.
