The ruling by the terrorist group’s scholars was discovered in documents which US Special Forces found in a raid in Eastern Syria in May and raise concerns that ISIS is trafficking body parts.
The papers, which were dated as January 31 and in the form of a fatwa, were found among a trove of data which has now been translated and investigated by officials in America.
The document, from the ISIS’s Research and Fatwa Committee says: “The apostate’s life and organs don’t have to be respected and may be taken with impunity. Organs that end the captive’s life if removed: The removal of that type is also not prohibited.”
The document does not offer any proof that ISIS actually engages in organ harvesting or organ trafficking.
But it does provide religious sanction for doing so under the group’s twisted interpretation of Islam - which is rejected by most Muslims.
Previously, Iraq accused ISIS of harvesting human organs and trafficking them for profit.
The document does not define “apostate,” though the ISIS has killed or imprisoned non-Muslims, such as Christians, and Shiite Muslims, as well as Sunni Muslims who don’t follow its extremist views.
US officials say the records that were seized have given the US government a deep look into how ISIS organizes, raises funds and codifies laws for its followers.
Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations, Mohamed Ali Alhakim, believes they should be examined by the UN Security Council as evidence that ISSIS could be trafficking in organs to raise cash.
The May raid in Syria, which resulted in the death of ISIS top financial official Abu Sayyaf and the capture of his wife, netted seven terabytes of data in the form of computer hard drives, thumb drives, CDs, DVDs and papers, said Brett McGurk, US President Barack Obama’s Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL/ISIS, in an interview.
Abu Sayyaf was a Tunisian militant whose real name was Fathi ben Awn ben Jildi Murad al-Tunisi.
US officials have previously described the Abu Sayyaf raid and some of the documentation seized. But until now, none of the actual documents have been released - aside from materials illustrating ISIS’s trafficking in antiquities, made public at an event at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in September.
The US government has shared some of the documents from the Abu Sayyaf raid with allied governments in an effort to increase their understanding of ISIS in recent weeks as Washington works to shore up support for countering the group.
The group of documents entitled “Lessons Learned From the Abu Sayyaf Raid” show how ISIS has provided a legal justification to its followers for a range of practices.
For instance, “Fatwa Number 64” dated January 29, 2015, provides detailed rules for rape, prescribing when ISIS men can and cannot have sexual intercourse with female slaves.
McGurk said ISIS’s Research and Fatwa Committee reports directly to the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
William McCants, a Brookings Institution scholar who is author of the book “The ISIS Apocalypse,” said the group’s ruling on slavery and human organs don’t represent modern Islamic interpretations.
In February, Alhakim, had urged the UN Security Council to investigate the deaths of 12 doctors in the ISIS-held city of Mosul. Alhakim said the doctors were killed after refusing to remove organs.
The UN special envoy for Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, said at the time that he could not confirm the claim, but it would be investigated.
The UN has not provided an update on that investigation, which Alhakim said he would ask the Security Council to revisit; Daily Mail reported.
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