Australians aghast at boy's grisly photo from Syria. Are jihadis coming home?
The photograph shows a young boy holding a decapitated head and was published by Australian media. The incident has drawn attention to the ranks of Westerners joining jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq.
The photograph shows a young boy holding a decapitated head and was published by Australian media. The incident has drawn attention to the ranks of Westerners joining jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq.
A primary school age boy holds up a severed head using both hands. The caption 鈥� tweeted by his father 鈥� reads, 鈥淭hats my boy!鈥�
The photograph, published in The Australian and other media over the weekend,聽shows the young son of Khaled Sharrouf. Mr. Sharrouf fled Australia last year to fight in Syria and brought his sons with him. The photograph is聽believed to have been taken聽in late July in Raqqa, a stronghold of the self-declared Islamist State (IS).聽
But the photo, and the uproar it has raised in Australia, highlights a growing concern among Western nations: that their citizens, particularly youth, are becoming radicalized in the violent crises of the Middle East.
The young boy in the photograph was raised in the suburbs of Sydney. Other photographs posted on Sharrouf鈥檚 Twitter account show him posing with his young sons and the IS flag; father and sons are all holding guns.聽
Sharrouf, an Australian citizen, is a convicted terrorist and is wanted in Australia for crimes committed in Iraq and Syria, including the alleged execution of an Iraqi official. He used his brother鈥檚 passport to leave Australia last year after his own was confiscated.聽
Mostafa Sharrouf, the brother, told The Sydney Morning Herald that聽people should forget about the photograph, 鈥淗e鈥檚 gone, forget about it. He鈥檚 forgotten about youse [sic]. I鈥檓 sure you鈥檝e seen much worse than that.鈥�
Sharrouf was convicted in 2009 of possessing materials that could be used to build bombs and spent four years in prison. The court found that he had had a聽troubled childhood and suffered from hallucinations.
As the Monitor鈥檚 Sara Miller Llana recently reported,聽increasing numbers of volunteers聽from Western countries are going to fight with extremist rebels in Iraq and Syria. Many are drawn to the conflicts by social media and online recruiting.
The Monitor followed the story of young Parisian woman, Salma, who faced mental handicaps in her youth that her family believes were exploited by recruiters to convince her to go to Syria.
For the rest of the Monitor鈥檚 cover story on the changing face of Europe鈥檚 new jihadis, click here.聽