The Jordanian pilot who was captured by ISIS — and then burned alive in a cage — had no idea he was going to be slaughtered on camera, a former militant says.
“We filmed him on the site of where he was going to be executed and zoomed in on his face, but at that time he didn’t know we were planning to set him a light,” the jihadist explained in a documentary that aired on Al Arabiya this week.
“We also filmed the fighters, who were standing on guard,” he said.
It wasn’t until First Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh was being drenched in gasoline that he realized what was going on, the extremist added.
In the high-quality kill video — filmed in the Syrian city of Raqqa and posted by the Islamic State on Feb. 3, 2015 — the 22-year-old can be seen walking alone in front of a line of masked fighters.
The militant said on the documentary that they used four different cameras to capture the execution on film.
Moments before setting al-Kaseasbeh ablaze, dramatic music plays in the background of the video as one of the ISIS fighters lights a torch and ignites a trail of gas to his cage in slow motion. The young pilot can be seen screaming and falling to his knees in pain as the flames engulf him.
Al-Kaseasbeh had been captured by ISIS after his jet was shot down during a mission in Raqqa. The militant who spoke to Al Arabiya said they chose to kill him because they wanted to send a message to people across the world.
The pilot’s death was later confirmed by Jordanian authorities.
The 22-minute execution video — titled “Healing the Believers’ Chests” — went viral after its release and sparked widespread outrage in Jordan. Scores of people marched in the capital and al-Kaseasbeh’s hometown in the days that followed and authorities even executed a pair of ISIS-linked terror suspects as a result.
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