Syria anti-ISIL documentary maker 'assassinated' in Turkey

BEIRUT - Agence France-Presse

A Syrian activist who produced documentaries hostile to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) was assassinated in Turkey on Dec. 27, according to the group with which he worked, "Raqa is Being Slaughtered Silently."

"Film maker Naji Jerf, father of two children, was assassinated... today in Gaziantep", on the border with Syria, with a silencer-equipped pistol, the group said in a statement on Twitter.
 
RBSS is a group of citizen journalists who work to expose human rights abuses in Raqqa, the northeastern city that ISIL uses as its de facto capital in Syria.
 
A friend of Jerf's said he had been "supposed to arrive in Paris this week after receiving, along with his family, a visa for asylum in France".
 
Jerf was also editor in chief of Hentah, a Syrian magazine that reports on the "daily lives of Syrian citizens", said the publication's website.
 
Turkish media reported that the 37-year-old had been producing a documentary on massacres carried out by ISIL jihadists  when he was killed.    

"He was hit by a bullet in the head as he was walking in the street and taken to hospital, where he died," the T24 news website reported.

Meanwhile, The Committee to Protect Journalists organization also condemned the murder.

"We call on Turkish authorities to bring the killers of Naji Jerf to justice swiftly and transparently, and to step up measures to protect all Syrian journalists on Turkish soil," said Sherif Mansour, the CPJ's Middle East and North Africa programme co-ordinator.
 
This is not the first time a Syrian occupation figure has been murdered in Turkey.
 
At the end of October, ISIL claimed responsibility for killing militant Ibrahim Abdelkader and a friend. They were found decapitated in a house in Şanlıurfa in southern Turkey.