CHILDREN OF THE CALIPHATE
SCRIPT 5 (THU OCT 1) FINAL
AS READ
Files
Cubs of the Caliphate
File: Child Assassins
ASTON: ISIS VIDEO
Top right
(upsot from video)
These pictures show the so-called Islamic State creating a new army in Syria and Iraq.
(Boy: Thanks to God we are His army and will fight His enemies)
Channel 4 News has gathered the first evidence of a systematic campaign to embed ISIS ideology into the next generation
… including the recruitment of children as young as eight.
(upsot)
..as soldiers and suicide bombers
Ibrahim
Sat 12 September Card 1
10:30-10:40
Sat
We speak to a 15 year old boy who’s just been through ISIS military training …
01:05.00
01:05:09
They say you should give everything to them
Even sacrifice yourself
Emil
Thur Card 2
0221 …to an ISIS teacher who prepared children for death …
EMIL
Thur Card 2
0221 12.20 (check in)
So that all the small children would join Jihad.
The thing ISIS depends on most is the children
Omar
Wed 9 Sept Card 1 ...and a boy soldier who paid a terrible price for resisting.
Teddy Told for the first time this is the shocking - and sometimes bizarre world of the Caliphate - where young children are being taught how to kill and how to die.
Hold on the kid with holding up the knife
TITLE CARD CHILDREN OF THE CALIPHATE
(child fighters training)
Aston: ISIS VIDEO
(music..)
The so-called Islamic State has tens of thousands of children under its control.
Children they are now actively recruiting as their next generation of fighters.
ASTON: ‘HAMUDE’, 10
Ten-year-old Hamude was one of them.
HAMUDE, 12
WED SEPT 9
Card 1
19.20
They showed us how to load and strip the guns
and how to be in the shooting position
so we stripped the m and assembled them and put them against the wall
Street gvs / alleys/ shadows COM
Getting more information about ISIS military training isn’t easy
Thousands of Syrian refugees now live in Turkish border towns … but ISIS is here too.
SAT 12 September
CARD 1
0359
*Could use this or just com ref to the fear among those here EW
Ever since we have arrived people have been telling how there are IS sympathisers living among the Syrians here in turkey that means most of them are too afraid to speak to us
But some children were willing to speak out on condition of anonymity.
Abu Ibrahim
Walk in to i/v
Abu Ibrahim
SAT 12 SEPT CARD 1
0327
At 14, Abu Ibrahim – not his real name - joined the ISIS army after they convinced him they were pure Muslims.
Abu Ibrahim
SAT 12 SEPT CARD 1
18:21- 18:49
ASTON:
‘ABU IBRAHIM’ 14
I gave everything I had to Islamic State’s victory
because I thought it was being oppressed by everyone.
They said you should give everything to them, even sacrifice yourself
But when they threatened to kill his brother Abu Ibrahim lost faith in ISIS and fled.
Clips from training videos
Cubs of the Caliphate
(upsot from video)
ISIS videos show children being put through rigorous physical training.
(upsot)
But Abu Ibrahim says they are also being taught something much more dangerous
49.07-49.50
ABU IBRAHIM
Abu Ibrahim
SAT 12 SEPT CARD 1
in this religious military camp you learn something called ‘listening and obeying’
49:50- 50:22
You declare ‘I must listen and obey even if I have to die.’
50:43- 51:17
You must always repeat ‘I’m listening and obeying’
Clips
From Cubs of the Caliphate
ISIS calls these children Cubs of the Caliphate
Abu Ibrahim says from what he and others saw, thousands of children are being systematically recruited across ISIS controlled territory in to the three different units of the ISIS army – and that children are central to it’s long term strategic plan.
SAT 12 SEPT CARD 1
01:08:00-
01:08:29
ASTON: ‘ABU IBRAHIM’
There are three army sections, The state army, the Caliphate army and the Adnan Army.
Cubs in black getting kicked in the stomach
(upsot kids in black)
This I.S. video shows what Abu Ibrahim calls the second stage of basic training for children where they are further coerced to commit violence.
All of this seemingly unaffected by hundreds of coalition air strikes
It’s physically hard but the main aim is to create a new army of unquestioning, and what ISIS deems, ideologically pure fighters.
01:04:32-01:04:51 They are making a new generation for the Caliphate to fight infidels…
01:04:52-
01:05:09 There are many children who now have absolute loyalty.
Come back to kids in black or the balaclava kids – suicide squads
ISIS VIDEO (upsot from video/ chanting)
It’s that loyalty that ISIS is exploiting for another horrifying purpose.
It starts with showing the children videos of suicide attacks.
12:02-12:35
ABU IBRAHIM
Abu Ibrahim
SAT 12 SEPT CARD 1
POSS COM
the scenes are repeated again and again and when a child sees them he thinks ‘I want to do the same as them’
so they go to ISIS and say “I want to become a suicide bomber.”
EW EW
How young would be the youngest boy that wants to be a suicide bomber?
14:45-15:18 The youngest I saw do an operation was eight years old
EW looking a bit shocked EW Eight … that’s just a child?
15:35-15:58
AI Yes, and you will never be able to persuade him to give up his ideas
Night / breather for the moment to absorb the eight
(breather – go wide – call to prayer)
INDOCRINATION
Getting young children to sacrifice their lives without question requires intensive indoctrination.
we tracked down an insider who was in charge of that process.
CARD 3
Thursday 10th Sept
EMIL - VOICE CHANGE
Ev and Emil standing
11.25.06 standing intro
Until just a few weeks before we met her Emil, was an ISIS teacher who prepared girls as young as ten to seek death.
EMIL 06:51-07:15
Teacher and former Al-Khansaa,
10:41-11:17
We push them into jihad
We tell them that all of us will die martyrs and reach Heaven, all of us.
It’s is written in the Koran you have to fight jihad
So we all have to join jihad
for the sake of God and the Islamic State.
She too narrowly escaped after becoming disillusioned by the scale of the violence.
08:02-08:28
The most important thing to make them understand is that [President] Bashar’s state is infidel,
That everyone should fight them and that is God’s word.
08:46
BOYS IN RELIGIOUS SCHOOL (upsot lesson)
Basically they’re brainwashing children.
Classroom
These boys have also recently escaped ISIS-controlled Syria.
Now in Turkey, they attend weekly de-radicalization classes to counter the influence of Islamic State indoctrination.
HAMUDE
WED SEPT 9
Card 1 01.42
0126
ASTON: ‘HAMUDE’, 10 They came when we enter the mosque and ask: “Do you pray”
And we say ‘yes’
They say ‘Do you love Baghdadi’ [the ISIS leader] We say yes.
Then they say, ‘Are you sure you love you love Baghdadi?’ We answer of course.
Boy
‘What about your relatives?’
We say ‘we don’t know’
BRUTALISATION
Gathering boys in town squares – teacher
Wide two or street vision (upsot)
Children are then taught to spy on their parents - who risk death if they object to their children joining the ISIS army.
Boys are then routinely gathered in town squares.
Here they’re offered money and food to join iSIS and fed anti-western tirades.
(MAN: slaughter him. Why?
Because he is an infidel)
ASTON: ‘BASHEER’, 10 Ten year-old Basheer - also not his real name - was among them
AHMED on transcript
Basheer on shotlist
THU 10 September CARD 1
0214
13:18-13:46 AUDIO
ASTON: BASHEER, 10
When they gather us they say
‘Come with us and fight jihad in the name of God and you will enter Heaven ‘
They say ‘You will enjoy and we will give you lots of things’
And now many children have joined them
Street
PALMYRA EXECUTION Boys are then sat in front of big screens and forced to watch videos of ISIS brutality …
…propaganda films like this which shows the recent execution of Syrian soldiers in Palmyra.
ASTON: ‘AHMED’ 11 Ahmed is 11.
BASHEER ON TRANS
AHMED IN SHOTLIST
THU 10 September CARD 3
2018
00:59-01:24
Aston “AHMED”, 11
They showed us how they kill [President] Bashar’s soldiers
Sometimes we tried not to watch.
But when we did watch we were scared
They say they are forced to watch real executions too.
Boy execution clip
EXECUTION
“isis video shows young boy beheading syrian solider in palmyra”
(upsot man: To Christians gathering to conquer our State. You will fail)
But perhaps most disturbingly of all, ISIS releases videos showing these executions are increasingly being carried out by the boys themselves
Video evidence he is beheaded
Like this boy who beheaded a Syrian officer in January
“ISIS cub cub film supposedly killing two hostages” Or this one in which a boy apparently executes two alleged Russian spies.
ASTON: ISIS VIDEO
(cubs of the caliphate)
Boys are told they too will be killed if they don’t join ISIS by 16.
BREATHER
WIDE STREET GVS
FRI 11 September
CARD 1
But death is not the only punishment for refusing to join the Islamic State.
Wed 9TH SEPT 08:09-08:36
Omar Omar is 14.
Two shot no wounds He had been serving with moderate opposition forces.
ISIS fighters captured and then tortured him to try to force him to join them.
08:09-08:36
I was strung up and tortured for a month and a half
Omar
10:03- 10:22 They were saying ‘why don’t you pledge allegiance to Islamic State?’
‘Why don’t you fight against the non-Muslims with us’
11:13-11:39 But they are slaughtering Muslims.
Family / tea
He refused to join and was sentenced to a horrifying
punishment.
23:21-23:27
Omar They gathered the people, they tied my hand and leg
They put my hand on a wooden block
(listening pause)
and cut my hand off with a butcher’s knife
Then cut off my foot and put them in front of me to see.
WED SEPT 9TH
0111 04.36.22
Pics on the phone
These photos show Omar’s actual amputation.
0112
man all in black And the man, known as “The Bulldozer” who severed his limbs.
Omar tried to walk up the stairs
Omar’s amputations were carried out just three weeks before we met him. He’d escaped Syria only days before.
The price of his bravery is constant pain, depression and poverty.
Omar
30:25-30:32 (pause over walking up stairs)
When I leave my house I don’t return until night because of the stairs.
28:47-29:10
(Shakes head)
Since they cut my hand and foot I have given up on life
I cannot walk. I cannot hold anything
Stills of the amputation
Cars and weapons
Could use children doing executions
Omar’s public punishment was used as a warning to children not to resist ISIS.
01:11:35- 01:12:14
Omar
END SHOT OF OMAR
They brought chjldren and teenagers and told them ‘this man is a infidel so we will cut his hand and foot’
‘All those who fight against us will have their feet and hands cut off’
CUBS OF THE CALIPHATE
CLIPS
ASTON: IS VIDEO
OWN SUBS? (upsot video boys on bus )
The message this new ISIS army of children receives is that the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad is their main target...for now...
Clip synch and sub when man says they need to kill infidels (upsot video)
Subs from clip
Here here here comes the State of Islam
It will vanquish Bashir (and his daughter) Bushra the lowlifes and the infidels
Here comes the State of Islam
The World Trade Centre was turned into rubble
But as their own videos reveal their long-term plan is to attack the west whenever possible.
ISIS VIDEO
Subs from clip
If they call me a terrorist
I will consider it an honour
EMIL
EXPLOSIVE PLANS
22.51
EMIL
In the future they say they will attack and destroy many countries
that is what they have got planned.
God willing they will fail.