ISIL Militants Execute Iraqi Journalist for Refusal to Join Group

Islamic State militants executed a Mosul journalist after he had refused to pledge allegiance to the group, the Kurdistan Journalists Syndicate head told Kurdish Rudaw media network.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Akram Suleiman, the head of the syndicate in Mosul, told the network that the militants had murdered TV journalist Firas Bahri on Tuesday.

"They asked him to do Bai'at [an Islamic practice of pledging allegiance] with Daesh [ISIL], but he refused to do so. Finally, they killed him today," Suleiman was quoted as saying by Rudaw.

Some media reported that the journalist had been held hostage for almost three weeks before the execution.

According to Suleiman, Bahri was the seventh journalist from Mosul to have been executed by the ISIL.

He added that 10 more journalists, their location unknown, remained hostages.