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ISIS butchers beheaded an innocent man on charges of sorcery – but he was actually an alternative healer who practised acupuncture.

He was executed along with another man in the group’s Libyan stronghold of Sirte with a four foot-long scimitar sword in front of a crowd of locals forced to chant “Allahu Akhbar” – God is great – by gun-toting militants.

The man – dressed in an orange jumpsuit – was blindfolded and forced to kneel in front of his masked executioner as his “charge” of sorcery was read out.

A refugee from captured Sirte now living further along Libya’s Mediterranean coastline in Misrata, which is not under ISIS control revealed as he watched a video of the killing on a mobile phone.

He said: “I know that man personally. He is not a witch, he is just an alternative healer who does homeopathy and acupuncture. He was wrongly accused.”

Sirte – former leader Libya Colonel Gaddafi’s home city and just 350 miles across the sea from Italy – is fast becoming a major ISIS outpost as bombing raids on positions in Iraq and Syria put pressure on the regime in the Middle East.

Around 3,000 fighters – many from neighbouring North African nations like Morocco and Tunisia - control the city.