Islamic State’s senior enforcer in Roj detention camp was nine years old when the remnant of the terror group’s caliphate was overrun at Baghouz. Now he is 14. A photograph of him held in the director’s office shows a glowering, heavily-built youth dressed in black. His deputy, similarly dressed but paler skinned, is the same age.
Together, the two teenagers run gangs of boys to do their bidding, threaten adult women in the camp with death for perceived transgressions, make improvised weapons, and preach extremist doctrine to children in weekly khutbah sermons.
“He is like the Islamic State ‘emir’ in this camp,” said the director of the Roj detention facility, Rashid Omar, 39, describing the enforcer as he looked at the pictures of the boys.
