Shajul Islam
 Shajul Islam  | |
|---|---|
 Doctor of Terror | |
Shajul Islam is a doctor in the Al Qaeda-controlled Syrian province of Idlib who accused the Syrian government of carrying out a chemical attack on civilians at Khan Sheikhun on 4 April 2017.[1]
In October 2012, Shajul Islam was arrested in the UK and charged with kidnapping two photographers in Syria, one British and one Dutch (Jeroen Oerlemans). He was accused of providing medical treatment for the Salafi jihadist extremist group in Syria that held the journalists hostage.
The case eventually fell apart and the charges against Islam were dropped because the prosecution was not able to hear evidence from the victims, who were the key witnesses. The attorney said this served "to frustrate the trial from the point of view of the prosecution." John Cantlie, one of the journalists Islam was accused of kidnapping, was unable to appear at the trial because he was still a hostage. He had been briefly freed in July 2012, but was soon kidnapped again — this time by ISIS. Cantlie was held with James Foley, the American journalist who was beheaded on camera by Mohamed Emwazi, an ISIS foreign fighter from London.
Islam's younger brother, Razul, reportedly entered Syria to volunteer as a foreign fighter in the ranks of ISIS. Sometime in 2016, Shajul Islam smuggled himself back into Syria and is now working in Idlib where Salafi jihadists ethnically cleansed religious and ethnic minorities from the area, while banning music and instituting a violent theocratic system in which women accused of adultery are publicly executed.
Amnesty International documented Salafi jihadist groups' use of summary killings, torture, abductions and sectarian violence in the province.[2]
