But what struck the public was a detail, present in every video: the calm of the hostages.
One wonders: why should a hostage obey his executioner knowing he is going to die?
Indeed, it would seem that the hostages had found an agreement with their executioners for a more human death.
"We reassure them by saying that nothing will happen to them, they don't know they will die"
In a new interview with Sky News, a deserter from the Islamic State explained the reason.
The hostages remain calm - the repentant terrorist explained - because we reassure them, saying that nothing will happen to them. They didn't know they were going to die.
The former member of the Islamic State, called "Saleh", said that the Caliphate reassures the hostages by making them film fake executions.
Don't worry - we tell them - nothing dangerous will happen to you.
The hostages, therefore, are accustomed to being part of those "trials" and invited to act also with a certain "kindness", to then be executed without their knowledge once their role in the design of the ISIS has been concluded.
For American counter-terrorism, the fake executions have long been known. A diabolical technique used to avoid the unconscious gestures of those who are about to die.
The former terrorist has therefore confirmed the numerous reports held by the American secret services. A precise "modus operandi" typical of the "psychological war", a factory stamp of the Islamic State.
A technique probably adopted on the basis of experience. According to a CIA report, in fact, the hostages of the war in Iraq who knew they were dying, acted in an unpredictable way, shocking even the executioners themselves.
In a video of 2004, a South Korean named Kim Sun Il, begged his executioner, begging him to spare his life.
I don't want to die, "said Kim Sun Il." Please don't want to die.
The men who killed him were part of the fundamentalist group Jamaat al-Tawhid (led today by Ibrāhīm ʿAwwād Ibrāhīm al-Badrī), precursor of the Islamic State. No wonder.
During the Wannsee Conference held on January 20 of 1942, Rudolf Lange, Commander of SiPo and SD in Latvia, spoke about the psychological problems of soldiers after the killings of Jews, advocating the start of the Final Solution through gas chambers. In this way, the SS would not have problems of a psychological nature for mass shootings as well as for the screams and cries of men, women and children that hurt their honor.
But if reports have now confirmed the mock executions, it can be explained why some killings are not shown. In some cases, the hostages realize they are about to die and act like real heroes, ruining the propaganda elements of the video.
The British and American media, for example, take only one case, that of the murder of Fabrizio Quattrocchi, which took place ten years ago in Iraq.
Quattrocchi realized that he was going to die - the most authoritative newspapers recall - and looking up he faced his jailers, addressing to them a phrase that is taken for example by the patriots of half the world (and God knows how much Italy would need it).
Quattrocchi's last sentence to those who were about to kill him was: "I MAKE YOU SEE AS AN ITALIAN DIES".
Franco Iacch
(in the opening photo a frame of the video with the American journalist Steven Sotloff a few moments before the beheading. Below the last moment of Fabrizio Quattrocchi's life)
