'ISIL in Aleppo' video director murdered in Turkey

'ISIL in Aleppo' video director murdered in Turkey
Islamic State group has claimed that they have assassinated another member of the Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently journalist campaign against the extremist group, filmmaker/journalist Naji Jerf, in Turkey.
2 min read
27 December, 2015
Naji Jerf leaves behind a wife and two young daughters [Twitter post by Kaan Wafi]
Islamic State group militants have shot dead a prominent Syrian journalist and filmmaker on Sunday in Turkey, as part of a campaign to assassinate members of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, a citizen journalism effort against the extremist group.

Naji Jerf was assassinated on Sunday afternoon in the city of Gaziantep in southern Turkey. Reports say that he was shot using a silenced pistol near a cafe that he regularly frequented, a day before he was scheduled to fly to Paris for treatment.

A few other activists from the same group have been killed in Turkey in the past two months.

Two activists from the anti-IS group, Ibrahim Abdul Qader and Faris al-Hamadi, were shot and decapitated in the southern Turkish town of Urfa, near the Syrian border, on 30 October.

Other members of the group were killed inside Syria a few days ago. IS claimed responsibility for the killing of Jerf in a tweet, calling him an "agent for the crusaders," the same description they gave the other activists they claimed to have killed two months ago.

Jerf, 38, is from the Syrian town of Silmiya in Hama's eastern countryside. He leaves behind a wife and two young girls, Yem (7) and Amy (5).

Jerf directed the video "ISIL in Aleppo," which was shown on Al-Arabiya, a pan-Arab television news channel, also posted by Jerf on YouTube last week.

In the video Jerf documents IS human rights violations since they became present in Aleppo in 2013 until he left in 2014.