Islamic State: Qatari royal family's Syrian mansion becomes Isis' luxury headquarters

A huge mansion owned by the Qatari Royal Family is now home to Islamic State's chiefs.

The Syrian estate decorated with gold leaf columns and marble floors was seized from a billionaire Arab sheikh.

Social media posts from Isis showed pictures of the mansion, calling it "A castle for tyrants of Qatar in Palmyra."

The Qatari royal family are said to have fled the property when Islamic State (Isis) was advancing on Palmyra.

A Syrian who claimed to have worked on building the property said on Twitter that the marble floors inside the Mozeh Palace were the same as those used at the holy mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

Photographs posted by IS's Homs Province media network shows a sprawling estate with several gazebos, an indoor swimming pool and grand bedrooms.

The mansion is known as Mozeh Palace, according to locals and was built for Emira Mozeh, the mother of the current Emir of Qatar, the British-educated Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Khalifa Al Thani, according to Mail Online.

Tamim was appointed deputy commander-in-chief of Qatar's armed forces in 2009 and has also worked as a sports administrator. In 2006, readers of the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram voted him "the best sport personality in the Arab world".

That year, he chaired the organising committee of the 15th Asian Games in Doha, attended by all member countries for the first time.

A member of the International Olympic Committee, Sheikh Tamim also heads Doha's bid for the 2020 Olympic Games.

In May, the jihadists reportedly opened a luxury hotel in Mosul, Iraq's second city, the Ninawa International Hotel.

Charlie Winter, a counter-extremism researcher told the Independent that this was an attempt by IS to show that the US-led coalition was not succeeding.

"I think the message the propagandists are trying to portray is that if the coalition is really causing damage then IS wouldn't be able to host gala dinners with fireworks at a luxury hotel."