At the end of 2014, ISIS began cracking down on media activists in Raqqa, causing many to flee. Ibrahim Abd al-Qader and Fares Hamadi were two who fled. Their work with the organization, “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently” (RBSS), which documents violations by ISIS, Assad, and the international coalition as well as living conditions in Raqqa, made them targets for ISIS.

Ibrahim Abd al-Qader was one of the most active members of RBSS, who joined when the organization was formed in April 2014. He, like many other young men, had started working in media shortly after the start of the Syrian uprising, documenting regime crimes and covering protests and actions in Raqqa. Hamadi, on the other hand, was relatively new to the field, having only started in April 2014.

On October 29, 2015 Ibrahim Abd al-Qader and Fares Hamadi were found beheaded in a house in Salinurfa, Turkey 55 kilometers from the Syrian border.

What threat did these two young men pose to ISIS? So much so that they were followed and killed in this manner?

Abu Mohammad, one of the founders of RBSS, worked closely with al-Qader and Hamadi, said that many of the members of the group have been threatened by ISIS and their like, for their persistent documentation. Members of RBSS receive these threats regularly through their Facebook pages, and recently one of the members of RBSS, Mo’ataz, was assassinated in Raqqa not too long ago. As a result, the organization has launched a campaign to highlight the threats that its members, based both in Raqqa and outside, face daily. It profiles 16 activists, who detail the daily threats to their lives: the Assad regime, international coalition airstrikes, ISIS, and others. They stress, in this campaign, that those who report and speak power to truth face more threats than those who take up arms.

The group was recently awarded with an America Abroad Media award and is slated to receive the Committee to Protect Journalists’ International Press Freedom Award. According to Ibrahim al-Daher, who was friends with al-Qader and Hamadi, it was these awards that may have lead to their assassination.

Al-Qader was an instrumental and influential member of RBSS, who continued to publish the truth despite the number of threats he received. ISIS murdered him and Hamadi, who was also a graphic designer for Eyes on the Homeland, a publication that dealt with ISIS’s crimes and human rights violations in Raqqa.

The assassinations were not normal: they were carried out in Turkey, outside the borders of the so-called Islamic State. This leads one to believe that this was planned months in advance, and that they have agents willing to carry out their work at any time, in any place. This has delivered a sort of message to activists: “We will silence your voices and kill anyone, anywhere, who disagrees with us; we will send a message to the governments of the world to show them of what we are capable. To carry out such an assassination, outside of areas that we control, shows the efficacy of our sleeper cells.”

Al-Qader was buried in Akcakale, a Turkish town in the Salinurfa province, and Hamadi’s body was returned to his family. However, Turkish officials have yet to officially announce their search of the perpetrators.

This new crime was carried out by ISIS silently, a new advance in their war against the media, proving that they are hell-bent on imposing their darkness and silence on everything.