ISIS detained many youths on charges of supporting “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently”

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Raqqa city has seen over the past two days, a campaign of raids and arrests affected many of the young men of the city, in addition to set up temporary checkpoints to inspect pedestrians and vehicles, and arrest anyone who carry a laptop in order to inspect and examine it.

This campaign of arrests has affected also some young people inside Internet cafes, under the pretext of put “Like” mark for the posts of “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently” page on Facebook, the detainees were taken to the province building for interrogation. Mostly, multiple charges may be brought for these young people, such as dealing with ” RBSS “, and trying to abort the Islamic State project and causing damage to the prestige of the organization.

It appears that these charges are not much different from those that were fired by Assad’s regime on its opponents, such as weakening national morale and undermining the prestige of the state and dealing with external parties. About 25 young have been arrested during these two days, claiming that these young men were in touch with “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently”, but these charges are false, where there is no person among the detainees knows the members of the campaign or in touch with them. This campaign of arrests came in view of the organization’s inability to detect the members of the campaign Inside the city of Raqqa, or get further information to help them to stop members activities, such as distributing leaflets and the graffiti campaigns against ISIS ideology.

It is worth mentioning that all members of the campaign have been undergone a high training in digital security, personal safety and ability to stealth, this is evidenced by videos posted on the campaign site, where leaflets were being put near the major sites of the organization and in the main streets, although the organization had put in an earlier time many cameras to monitor the members of the campaign in an attempt to uncover their identities during the exercise of their activities, but these efforts have failed. The campaign has lost one of its members, “Moataz Bellah Ibrahim”, who was arrested and executed by the organization on May 7, 2014 in the city of Tell Abyad, as he tried to get out of Raqqa towards Turkey, it was at the beginning of the formation of the campaign. Moataz Bellah was not arrested for being one of the members of the campaign, but he was executed because of his work with Sham media network, so the organization did not discover that he was a founding member of the campaign only after his execution.

The campaign did not lose after this incident none of its members, whether by execution or even just arrest or detention by the organization, where the members are still exercising their usual activities at home and abroad, and they had not been subjected to any little harm. In spite of the failure of all attempts by the organization to take down the members of the campaign, but they still seek to destabilize the popular incubator from the sons of Raqqa province who support the campaign, by working on presenting the campaign as an external enemy and a stranger from the fabric of the city, and warning that any personal relationship or knowledge of one of the campaign members at home or abroad will bring damage and doom to its owner.