Lured by empty promises, Arab Israeli ‘spy’ joined ISIL

Ever since the extremist group announced last month that Mohammed had been captured as a spy for Mossad, his family knew his days were numbered.

The mother of 19-year-old Mohammed Musalam, an Arab Israeli executed by ISIL in Syria, is pictured in her East Jerusalem home on March 11, 2015. Ilia Yefimovich/Getty Images

JERUSALEM // Said Musalam has not watched the ISIL video purportedly showing the execution of his teenage son Mohammed by a child in army fatigues.

Mohammed, 19, was accused by the extremist group of being a Mossad spy.

“My son told me I shouldn’t see it, that it will cause too much pain,” said the bus driver from Jerusalem as Jewish neighbours came to comfort him at his apartment in the Neve Yaacov settlement neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem.

“God-willing their end will be near,” his neighbour Aharon Bar-Tal said of the ISIL extremists.

Mr Musalam did not appear shocked by the death.

Ever since the extremist group announced last month that Mohammed had been captured as a spy for Mossad, the family knew his days were numbered.

“We were ready for this blow from ISIL,” Mr Musalam said.

He believes ISIL made up the story about his son being a spy “so that they would have an excuse to kill him” after he tried to leave the group and make his way back home.

“That’s not true; my son doesn’t work for the Shin Bet. ISIL did this to scare the world,” Mr Musalam said.

His son had seen a lot during his three-month stint with ISIL and the group did not want him telling anyone about it, Mr Musalam said.

The video, published by the group’s Furqan media outlet, showed Mohammed sitting in a room wearing an orange jumpsuit, talking about how he had been recruited and trained by the Israeli intelligence service.

The child shown in the video, who appears to be responsible for Mohammed’s death, and a man who also features in the footage have both been identified as French citizens, it emerged on Wednesday.

Investigators are looking into whether the man, who speaks with a southern French accent, is the stepbrother of Mohammed Merah, an extremist who killed seven people in attacks on a Jewish school and paratroopers in southern France in 2012.

In the video, the man praises attacks on Jews “in your own stronghold in France” as he and the boy stand behind the man – purported to be Mohammed – who is about to be killed.

Mohammed’s 15-year-old brother, Amir, watched the video. He said doing so was “difficult” and that afterwards, the images kept on playing in his mind and made him cry.

“It is hard to believe this happened,” said Amir, who used to sleep in the same room as his brother.

Mohammed completed vocational high school training as a car electrician last year and worked as a fireman for an Israeli government volunteer service programme until four months ago.

That’s when the family’s ordeal began.

In November, he disappeared after saying he was going on a trip to Turkey, Amir recalled.

A month later, he said in a Facebook post that he had joined ISIL in Syria. “What happened is they promised him a place to live, a wife, money and he believed them,” Amir said.

“He simply made a mistake, a very big one.”

In a later communication with his family, Mohammed said that none of what he had been promised had materialised.

He asked his father for money to come home, and told his family he would be in touch from the Turkish-Syrian border – but he was arrested there instead.

The next communication the family got was a phone call from someone who identified himself as Mohammed’s guard in an ISIL-controlled prison.

“He [the guard] said he’s OK and not to worry,” Mr Musalam recalled.

Three weeks later an ISIL publication announced Mohammed was being held for spying on behalf of the Israeli spy agency.

“I know my own brother very well,” Amir said. “Saying he worked in Mossad is a fabrication. Because he tried to run away they thought he was in the Mossad.”

“Mohammed is just a child, like a baby, only 19 years old,” his father lamented.

* Additonal reporting from Reuters, Associated Press and Agence France-Presse