ISIS Executed Tomislav Salopek 11 Years Ago
The first case of a Croatian citizen being kidnapped abroad ended tragically. His body was never found.
The first case of a Croatian citizen being kidnapped abroad ended tragically. His body was never found.
On this day, August 12, 2015, the world was shaken by the news of the execution of Croatian citizen Tomislav Salopek. Islamist militants released a video showing his beheading, ending days of agonizing waiting and uncertainty that began with his abduction in Cairo.
Tomislav Salopek, then 30 years old, was abducted on July 22, 2015, while driving to work in a company car in the Egyptian capital. He worked for the French company Compagnie Generale de Geophysique (CGG). News of his disappearance spread quickly, and the search lasted for days.
The first sign of his fate came on August 5, 2015, when a video was released showing Salopek kneeling in the desert. Beside him stood a masked man with a knife, while Salopek read a threat from a piece of paper. The kidnappers, members of the terrorist organization Islamic State (ISIS), gave the Egyptian government a 48-hour ultimatum to release imprisoned Muslim women, threatening to kill him otherwise.
After the ultimatum expired, nothing was known about Salopek's fate until August 12, 2015. That day, a new video was released confirming the worst fears - masked Islamists had beheaded the Croatian citizen.
Salopek's body was never found nor returned to his family. According to reports from Index.hr, many analysts agreed that it would likely never be found, a fate shared by many other victims of the Islamic State.
Tomislav Salopek was the first Croatian citizen kidnapped in a foreign country. His murder was also the first killing of a Western citizen by the Islamic State on Egyptian soil. He left behind his wife Nataša and two young children. At the time of the abduction, he was planning a vacation with his family.
A few months later, in November 2015, Egyptian authorities announced that Ahraf Ali al-Gharabali, identified as Salopek's executioner and a leading Islamist militant in Egypt, had been killed.
