Jurgen Todenhofer, 74, is a renowned German journalist and publicist who travelled through Turkey to Mosul, the largest city occupied by Isis, after months of negotiations with the group's leaders.
He plans to publish a summary of his "10 days in the Islamic State" on Monday, but in interviews with German-language media outlets has revealed his first impressions of what life is like under Isis.
Speaking to the website Der tz, Todenhofer revealed that he actually stayed in the same hotel in Benghazi as James Foley, the US journalist who was beheaded on camera by Isis in August.
"Of course, I've seen the terrible, brutal video and it was one of my main concerns during the negotiations as to how I can avoid (the same fate)," he said.
Once within Isis territory, Todenhofer said his strongest impression was "that Isis is much stronger than we think here". He said it now has "dimensions larger than the UK", and is supported by "an almost ecstatic enthusiasm that I have never encountered in any other warzone".
"Each day, hundreds of willing fighters arrive from all over the world," he told tz. "For me it is incomprehensible."
Todenhofer claims to have been able to move among Isis fighters, observing their living conditions and equipment. On his Facebook page, he has posted images which he said show German Heckler & Koch MG3 machine guns in the hands of Isis. "Someday this German MG could be directed to us," he said.
Isis's fighters themselves sleep, he said, in barracks formed from "the shells of bombed-out houses". They number around 5,000 in Mosul, and are spread so widely that were the US to bomb them all "they would have to reduce the whole of Mosul to ruins", he said.
Todenhofer says that this ultimately means Isis cannot be beaten by Western intervention or air strikes - despite US claims last week that they have proven effective. "With every bomb that is dropped and hits a civilian, the number of terrorists increases," he said.
Speaking in a TV interview with RTL's Nachtjournal programme two days after his return to Germany last week, Todenhofer said Isis has worked hard to establish itself as a functioning state. He said it has "social welfare", a "school system", and that he was even surprised to see it has plans to provide education to girls.
Most concerning of all, he said, was Isis fighters' belief that "all religions who agree with democracy have to die".
He said the view that kept being repeated was that Isis want to "conquer the world" and all who do not believe in the group's interpretation of the Quran will be killed. The only other religions to be spared, Todenhofer said, were the "people of the book" — Jews and Christians.
"This is the largest religious cleansing strategy that has ever been planned in human history", he told RTL.
Charlie Winter, a researcher for the anti-extremism thinktank Quilliam, said such comments about Isis being "a group that is formidable militarily and politically" were quoted by pro-Isis accounts because it is "a bitter pill for policymakers to swallow".
"That said, Todenhofer's comments on the massacre of the Yazidis and displacement of hundreds of thousands in Mosul have been routinely ignored by Isis supporters," Mr Winter said. "The facts are being cherry-picked to give a very narrow view of the situation that Todenhofer was met with in Syria and Iraq."
Todenhofer plans to use his first-hand experience of Isis in a book he is writing about the group. He says on Facebook that he has always "spoken to both sides" in his 50 years reporting from war zones, including interviews with Syria's President Bashar al-Assad and al-Qaida, with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai and with leaders of the Taliban.
In his view, Isis will soon come to the west to negotiate a level of co-existence. "The only ones who could stop this now are the moderate Iraqi Sunnis," he said, adding: "If you want to defeat an opponent, you must know him."
Isis has executed at least 150 women for refusing to marry militants in Iraq, Turkish media has reported.
A statement released by the country's Ministry of Human Rights on Tuesday said the militants had attacked women in the western Iraqi province of Al-Anbar before burying them in mass graves in Fallujah.
Some of the women killed were pregnant at the time, according to the Anadolu Agency.
"At least 150 females, including pregnant women, were executed in Fallujah by a militant named Abu Anas Al-Libi after they refused to accept jihad marriage," the statement said.
"Many families were also forced to migrate from the province's northern town of Al-Wafa after hundreds of residents received death threats."
Isis has overrun a large part of the western Anbar province in its push to expand its territory across swathes of Iraq and Syria.
The executions come after the militant group shot dead at least 50 men, women and children in a tribe massacre in the province last month.
The attack against the Al Bu Nimr tribe took place in the village of Ras al-Maa, north of Ramadi, the provincial capital. There, the militant group killed at least 40 men, six women and four children.
A senior tribesman said they were lined up and publicly killed one by one. An official within the Anbar governor's office corroborated the tribesman's account, according to The Associated Press.
Isis also recently published what appeared to be an "abhorrent" pamphlet providing its followers with guidelines on how to capture, keep and sexually abuse female slaves.
A Yazidi girl captured by ISIS has revealed the extreme abuse she suffers as a sex slave at the hands of Islamic State (IS) extremists.
Only 17 years old, Mayat, (not her real name) was kidnapped by members of ISIS on 3rd August during an offensive against Sinjar. She remains with her captors.
These men allowed Mayat, who speaks some English as she wanted to study in Europe, to talk because, "to hurt us even more, they told us to describe in detail to our parents what they are doing."
Her parents, refugees in Kurdistan, gave their daughter's number to a journalist from Italian paper La Repubblica.
The teenage girl begs her interviewer not to name her because: "I am ashamed of what they have done to me.
"Part of me would like to die immediately, to sink beneath the ground and say there. But another part that still hopes to be saved, and to be able to hug my parents once more."
One of around 40 women and young girls held by the extremists in an unknown city, Mayat estimates their ages as anything from 12 to 30.
"What are they doing to me?" She says, "I am too ashamed to say, and I don't even know how to describe my torture."
In the interview Mayat describes how the women and girls are kept in a house under armed guards.
There are, she says, three "rooms of horror" where the women are raped, often by different men and throughout the day.
"They treat us like slaves. We are always 'given' to different men. Some arrive straight from Syria," she says.
ISIS has made huge territorial gains across northern Iraq and parts of Syria, capturing thousands of women and children according to an Amnesty International report last month.
"They threaten us and beat us if we try to resist. Often I wish they would beat me so hard I will die. But they are cowards even in this. None of them have the courage to end our suffering."
Mayat says some of the youngest girls have stopped talking because of the abuse and were taken away by their captors. Many of the women have attempted to end their lives.
"Sometimes I feel as though it will never end. And if it did, my life would remain forever scarred by the torture I have suffered the past few weeks," Mayat says. "Even if I survive, I don't think I'll be able to remove this horror from my mind."
Mayat's story contradicts previous claims from ISIS which purport to show life under the Islamic State, highlighting their care of widows and children.
Earlier today the British government promised to donate guns and ammunition to Iraq to fight the insurgency.
Amid concerns of terrorism president Barack Obama has promised to address the American people tomorrow on efforts to "degrade and destroy" ISIS.
Mayat finished by saying: "They have already killed my body. They are now killing my soul."
ISIS have beheaded four Christian children in Iraq for refusing to convert to Islam, a British vicar based in the country has claimed.
Canon Andrew White, who is known as the 'vicar of Baghdad', told Orthodox Christian Network that the killings happened in a Christian enclave close to Baghdad which has been taken over by ISIS (formerly known as Islamic State).
He spoke of how ISIS has "hounded" the Christians out of Iraq, and how "they killed in huge numbers, they chopped their children in half, they chopped their heads off, and they moved north and it was so terrible what happened".
He told the network that militants "came to one of our people the other day, one of the Christians".
"They said to one man, an adult, 'Either you say the words of conversion to Islam or we kill all your children'.
"He was desperate, he said the words. And then he phoned me, and said, 'Abouna [Father], I said the words, does that mean that Yeshua doesn't' love me anymore?' I said, 'Yeshua still loves you, he will always love you".
Canon White claimed that the children who were beheaded had refused to "follow Mohammed".
"ISIS turned up and said to the children, 'You say the words that you will follow Mohammed'."
"The children, all under 15, four of them, said no, we love Yeshua, we have always loved we have always followed Yeshua, Yeshua has always been with us.
"They said: 'Say the words.' They said 'No, we can't.' They chopped all their heads off. How do you respond to that? You just cry."
Canon White said that ISIS were threatening to kill him, and that he is now living in Israel, following orders from the Archbishop of Canterbury to leave Iraq. He said that most of his staff are still in the north of Iraq trying to look after displaced Christians.
The ISIS extremist group has executed 100 of its own foreign fighters who tried to flee their headquarters in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the Financial Times reported on Saturday.
An activist opposed to ISIS and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, said he had "verified 100 executions" of foreign ISIS fighters trying to leave the jihadi group's de facto capital. ISIS fighters in Raqqa said the group has a military police to clamp down on foreign fighters who miss duty. Dozens of homes have been raided and many jihadis have been arrested, the FT reported. The British press reported in October that 12 Europeans wanted to return home complaining they did not end up fighting Assad's regime.
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