ISIS has been using chemical weapons, according to the reported confessions of a Belgian member of the group who has been sentenced to death in Iraq.
The Iraqi justice authorities on Tuesday published the confessions of the fighter, Bilal Abdoul-Aziz al-Marshouhi (25), known as Abdou Fadhil al-Belgiki (the Belgian), sentenced to death for being a member of the Islamic State (ISIS) and for fighting against the Iraqi army in Mossul, the Kurdish information site, Kurdistan 24, reported.
“I was born in Belgium and have Belgian nationality, despite my Moroccan origins,” al-Marshouhi explained. “I studied engineering at the University of Antwerp. I became a jihadist after becoming friends with someone who used to read books calling for a radical Islam,” he told the court in Baghdad.
Al-Marshouhi joined the al-Nostra Front accompanied by his Dutch wife. They left Belgium for Germany, then Turkey, where they crossed the Syrian border illegally and stayed with acquaintances in Aleppo. Al-Nostra then sent al-Marshouhi to a training camp, where he learned to handle weapons and met other foreign fighters.
He later left the Front after falling out with its head, Abou Barra al-Belgiki, “who accused me, among other things, of creating porno sites”, and joined ISIS, which appointed him a “policeman” in Aleppo.
According to the Belgian fighter, the ISIS police in Aleppo was made up of three units: the military police, which came under the army and was headed by a military judge, a judiciary police that came under a civilian judge, and a “police of Islam” made up of different patrols.
He was later “severely wounded in the head, back and right hand by mortar fire” and after he recovered, “worked in the administration in Raqqa”.
During questioning, Marshouhi said his group used chemical weapons, particularly chlorine mortars, in the Raqqa area and in a camp.
Oscar Schneider
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