Stoned to Death

The photographs released by ISIS in its stronghold of Raqqa are dated March 2015. The first ones show a large crowd, mostly men, but also among them a handful of women and children, all looking up.Three men on top of a building, faces covered in black balaclavas, stand on either side of their victim, while a fourth seems to be taking a photo or video.Their victim is thrown off the building. In the last photograph, he is seen face down, surrounded by a small crowd of men, most carrying weapons, some with rocks in their hands. The caption reads "stoned to death."The victim brutally killed because he was accused of being gay.

There are at least half a dozen documented cases of men being similarly killed byISIS. What's even more sickening for Nour, a gay Syrian man, is the onlookers' reaction."It's too much to watch, and people are just standing there in these images and watching, and they are not doing anything, and their facial expressions are really scary because they are not even scared of what is going on," says Nour, who's also an LGBT rights activist. "They might be a little bit excited or maybe happy to get rid of homosexuals in the city."Though in Istanbul, fear of persecution continues to haunt Nour, who asked us to conceal his identity as he waits and hopes for asylum in America and continues to campaign for rights for people who are LGBT -- lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans.

Courtesy: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/03/05/middleeast/isis-lgbt-persecution/index.html