BAGHDAD — Daesh (the so-called IS) is paying supporters up to $10,000 for each person that they recruit to wage war in Syria and Iraq, UN experts said after a visit to Belgium, one of the main countries of origin for so-called foreign fighters.
Elzbieta Karska, who chairs a UN group studying the issue, said Daesh is using social media and informal networks of friends and family, with many of them in Syria, to recruit new militants in Belgium.
The UN experts learned from Belgian contacts that 500 foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria originated in Belgium, the highest per capita of any EU country, she added.
“We have heard... about situations where recruiters were paid from two, three thousand to 10,000 dollars depending on... who was recruited,” Karska told a press conference in Brussels, adding the findings were preliminary.
“If somebody was well educated like computer specialists or doctors, they were paid more,” the Polish human rights lawyer added. Her colleague Patricia Arias, a Chilean lawyer, added “they are paid by Daesh.”
The Belgian-based extremist group Sharia4Belgium enlisted the first wave of recruits for Syria in 2010, according to Karska’s UN body, which was set up by the Geneva-based UN Commission on Human Rights. — AP
