Eight months ago, on December 28, a warplane from the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State, or ISIS, struck a building in the Syrian town of al-Bab that had been identified as a local headquarters for the militant group. It was just one of over a thousand airstrikes the coalition had launched up to that point. However, this building wasn’t simply a gathering place for militants or a storehouse for weapons. It was also being used as a makeshift prison for local civilians whom ISIS had accused of petty offenses like smoking cigarettes and wearing jeans.
The jail was a symptom of the harsh rule the Islamic State had imposed in early 2014. When ISIS took over the town, in the Aleppo region near the Turkish border, ordinary life gave way to a reign of terror. Executions were regularly carried out in the town square...
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