His battered and bloodstained body hung for three days on the cross on which he was crucified. Around his neck, the Islamic State butchers who killed him had hung a handwritten placard accusing him of apostasy — abandoning his religion. He was just 17 and the placard explained that the unnamed boy's crime had been to take photographs of the terrorist organisation's headquarters in the Syrian city of Raqqa, which has become the de facto IS capital. Images of his body were smuggled to the West in defiance of the city's terrifying religious police by undercover activists appalled at the daily brutality taking place in their city.