A former ISIS member operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan recalls watching militants committing “crimes against humanity” including raping girls as young as 10 years old. The ex-militant, under the alias Lahor Shah, initially joined ISIS in early 2014 because he thought it was a movement that supported Islam.

Shah tells al-Aan TV in Dubai that he later learned that ISIS was not the moderate movement in the interest of “the Muslims” like he had thought.

“I learned the truth about them when I was in their midst and in their camps,” Shah says. “I witnessed the worst crimes against humanity, perpetrated against Afghans, like the kidnapping and rape of girls no more than 12 years old.”

He later found out that ISIS was using Islam “in the service of their own interests,” and decided to leave. Now back with his family, he says the militant group robbed Afghan farmers by imposing “unbearable taxes” on traders.

“They are not what they pretend to be and their actions are completely against Islam,” Shah says. “They are always claiming that the infidels are plundering our beloved country but it is they who are destroying our country and our lives.”

Former Jihadist Speaks Out

Another former ISIS member, Abu Ibrahim, escaped from the group after seeing a public crucifixion and learning about other harsh realities of the militant group.

“A lot of people when they come, they have a lot of enthusiasm about what they’ve seen online or what they’ve seen on YouTube,” Ibrahim told CBS News in 2015. “They see it as something a lot grander than what the reality is. It’s not all military parades or it’s not all victories.”

The ex-militant watched a couple get stoned to death, after being accused of adultery, where leaders made an example out of them to enforce the Sharia law. Wanting to be under strict Islamic laws is what attracted Ibrahim to ISIS, but he did not accept militants publicly beheading innocent people.

“My main reason for leaving was that I felt that I wasn’t doing what I had initially come for and that’s to help in a humanitarian sense the people of Syria,” he said. “It had become something else.”

Taliban Fighters

Shah joined ISIS through a friend who had been a Taliban fighter for 18 years. His friend later followed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi after joining allegiance with the group. ISIS continues to join allegiances with other Islamic groups to expand across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

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