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American IS fighter: I made a bad decision American ISIS fighter captured by Kurds: ‘I found it hard’
(about 2 hours later)
IRBIL, Iraq — The American Islamic State group fighter who handed himself over to Kurdish forces in Iraq’s north earlier this week said he made “a bad decision” joining IS, according to a heavily edited interview he gave to an Iraqi Kurdish television station that aired late Thursday night. The 26-year-old Virginia man who was taken into custody in Iraq after he purportedly deserted the Islamic State told a Kurdish TV station Thursday that he decided to escape after he grew dissatisfied during intensive religious training in Mosul.
Mohamad Jamal Khweis, 26, from Alexandria, Virginia detailed his weeks-long journey from the United States to London, Amsterdam, Turkey, through Syria and finally to the IS-controlled Iraqi city of Mosul, where he was moved into a house with dozens of other foreign fighters. Mohamad Khweis told Kurdistan 24 that his life under the Islamic State in Mosul was a “very strict” regimen of prayer, eating and eight hours of daily instruction in religion and sharia law, and he soon came to realize, “I didn’t really support their ideology.”
Khweis said he met an Iraqi woman with ties to IS in Turkey who arranged his travel into Syria and then across to Mosul. There Khweis said he began more than a month of intensive Islamic studies and it was then he decided to try and flee. Khweis said he stayed only about a month, then reached out to someone who could help him get back near Turkey, and he planned eventually to return to America.
“I didn’t agree with their ideology,” he said, explaining why he decided to escape a few weeks after arriving. “I made a bad decision to go with the girl and go to Mosul.” “It was pretty hard to live in Mosul,” he said. “It’s not like the Western countries, you know, it’s very strict. There’s no smoking. I found it hard for everyone there.”
Khweis said a friend helped him escape Mosul to nearby Tal Afar. From there he said he walked toward Kurdish troops. “I wanted to go to the Kurdish side,” he said, “because I know they are good with the Americans.” [Watch: Mohamad Khweis speaking on Kurdistan 24]
The surrender took place on the front lines near the town of Sinjar, which was retaken by Iraqi forces from IS militants late last year. In the past year IS fighters have lost large amounts of territory in Syria and Iraq. Khweis is currently being held by Kurdish forces for interrogation. Khweis spoke haltingly but in fluent English in the roughly 17-minute video, which was edited and showed him sitting against a backdrop that included a Kurdish flag. Kurdish peshmerga forces took him into custody near the border town of Sinjar on Monday. What will happen to him next remains unclear, though the FBI — which had not previously had Khweis on its radar — is investigating the matter.
Though such defections are rare, Syrian Kurdish fighters battling IS have told The Associated Press that they are seeing an increase in the number of IS members surrendering following recent territorial losses. As the militants lose territory, U.S. officials predict there will be more desertions. In the video, Khweis said he was the son of two Palestinians who came to the United States more than 25 years ago and he himself was born and raised in Virginia. Friends have said he was a 2007 graduate of Fairfax County’s Edison High School, and Khweis said also attended college somewhere in Virginia and studied criminal justice.
“I wasn’t thinking straight,” Khweis said. “My message to the American people is that the life in Mosul is really, really bad,” he said, adding that he doesn’t believe the Islamic State group accurately represents Islam. Khweis said he attended American mosques only infrequently, and his friends from high school have said that he showed no signs of any kind of religious fanaticism.
The United Nations estimated that around 30,000 so-called foreign fighters from 100 countries are actively working with the Islamic State group, al-Qaida or other extremist groups. An earlier estimate by the International Center for the Study of Radicalization, a think tank at King’s College London, said IS fighters include 3,300 Western Europeans and 100 or so Americans. [Purported American Islamic State fighter wasn’t on FBI radar]
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. It was unclear from the video why Khweis decided to travel to the Islamic State in the first place. He said he left the United States in December, traveling first to London, then to Amsterdam, then to Turkey. He said he met an “Iraqi girl” there, and she said she knew someone who could take them into Syria.
“So I decided to go with her,” Khweis said.
Khweis said he took a bus from Istanbul to Gaziantep and took a taxi from there toward the Syria border. He said the sister of a girl he met had previously been married to an Islamic State fighter, and she made some arrangements for the trip.
At some point after crossing into Syria, Khweis said, he and his female companion were split up, and he was eventually driven to a house where foreigners seemed to stay. He said he turned over his identification papers to those in charge and soon headed to other houses for foreigners in Raqqa.
Khweis said he was surrounded by people from countries like Russia, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan but did not encounter any other Americans. Each person, he said, was given a nickname. He said he waited in Raqqa for about a week until he was transferred to Mosul for religious training, which he didn’t complete. The timeline of when he arrived and when he fled was not exactly clear.
“I didn’t agree with their ideology, and that’s when I wanted to escape,” he said.
Khweis said a friend told him the way to Sinjar, and he tried to stay near territory he knew was under Kurdish control.
“I wanted to go to the Kurd side because I know that they’re good with the Americans,” he said.
Khweis said he “wasn’t thinking straight” when he decided to travel to Syria and regretted his decision.
“Daesh, ISIS, ISIL, they don’t represent the religion,” he said, using other names for the Islamic State. “I don’t see them as good Muslims.”
A congressional report released late last year said that more than 250 people from the United States had joined or attempted to join extremist groups fighting overseas and warned that “many of them are only a plane-flight away from our shores.”
Missy Ryan contributed to this article.