Why ISIL Victims Appear So Calm before Execution

It seems weird that a person would be so tranquil before his death. The hostages are able to retain their poise probably because they don’t know they’re about to be executed.

Psychologists believe that the ISIL takes the hearing and vision senses from its victims by using special methods or drugs for a period of time and therefore, they fully surrender and welcome death without resistance.

They say that in such conditions, any human being prefers death to waiting.

Other psychologists believe that the ISIL victims are fed with sedatives before being killed.

Dr. Abdolhalim Mansour raises another hypothesis which says that the ISIL tortures its victims with very complicated methods that they prefer death to living as they are aware that no fate than death is waiting for them.

He also rejected this hypothesis that maybe some of the ISIL victims hope for being forgiven and freed.

His remarks came after a former member of the ISIL group said in 2014 that foreign hostages captured by terrorist group were subjected to numerous mock beheadings and were unaware they were about to be killed, offering an apparent explanation for why they seem so calm when reading statements to camera.

A former translator, “Saleh”, said that he was employed by the group to convince foreign hostages they were safe, before they were killed in videos featuring Mohammed Emwazi, the 26-year-old radical known as “Jihadi John”.

Hostages such as the US journalist James Foley and the British aid worker Alan Henning appeared unafraid when they read messages on camera moments before they were murdered.

Saleh said Emwazi ordered him to reassure the captives. “He would say to me ‘say to them, no problem, only video, we don’t kill you, we want from your government [to] stop attacking Syria. We don’t have any problem with you; you are only our visitors’.

“So they don’t worry. Always I say to them ‘don’t worry, doesn’t matter, nothing dangerous for you. But at the end I was sure [they would die].”