ISIS released a horrific video today confirming its spread to Libya as 21 Coptic Christians were beheaded on the beach.
With the image of the victims’ blood mixing with the waters of Mediterranean, ISIS’ Al-Hayat media titled the video, “A message signed with blood to the nations of the cross.”
The five-minute video, watched by PJ Media, shows masked ISIS members leading the Egyptian Copts, clad in orange jumpsuits, along the sand. The Egyptians, labeled as “the people of the cross, the followers of the hostile Egyptian church,” are made to kneel on the beach, facing away from the water, as killers stand behind them with knives.
All of the killers wore black except the spokesman, who, wearing camouflage, talks in English and sounds American; the video is subtitled in Arabic. “Safety for you crusaders is something you can only wish for,” he says. Some of the Copts are seen silently mouthing prayers as they stoically await their fate. At least one of the victims, beheaded by the spokesman, is black.
“They supplicate what they worship and die upon their paganism,” the screen says as the victims are leaned forward and beheaded. Their heads are placed upon the bodies.
“And we will conquer Rome, by Allah’s permission,” the American-accented narrator says, pointing his dagger at the sea.
The American-accented ISIS spokesman in the mass beheading video
ISIS published stills from the video in last week’s edition of their magazine Dabiq. The Libyan parliament confirmed Saturday that the Egyptians, kidnapped in January from Sirte where they’d gone to find work, were dead. Today the video link was tweeted from an ISIS account.
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi gave a televised address tonight in which he vowed to retaliate for the murders and warned of the “ferocious threats” facing the world. He also closed the border with Libya and is forbidding Egyptians from seeking work there, and announced a seven-day mourning period across the country.
El-Sisi is sending his foreign minister to the United Nations to “place the international community before its responsibility and to take necessary procedures in line with the UN convention and to declare that what is happening in Libya threatens international peace and security.”
He vowed that he’ll choose the “necessary means and timing to avenge the criminal killings.”
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