ISIS beheads two women for sorcery, activists say
BEIRUT - The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has beheaded two women they accused of practicing sorcery, activists said Tuesday.
Rami Abdurrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said one of the women was beheaded along with her husband. The beheadings were carried out over the past week, he said, without giving further details. All were accused of sorcery.
ISIS, which governs its self-styled caliphate in accordance with an extreme interpretation of Islamic law, has in the past beheaded dozens of people for blasphemy, sorcery and espionage.
The group has beheaded female Kurdish fighters, and they are well known to have punished civilian women with death by stoning for the crime of adultery or other offenses
However, this is the first known time they have beheaded a civilian woman, Reuters reports.
ISIS also "crucified" five men in al-Mayadeen for eating during daylight hours of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, according to Abdurrahman of the Observatory, a monitoring group which gathers information from a network of activists inside Syria.
Abdurrahman told Reuters they were hung up by their limbs on the city wall and children were encouraged to mock them as they suffered.