Khweis, who was born in the United States and grew up in a Virginia suburb of Washington, was interviewed by Kurdistan24 television station in Irbil, a Kurdish city in northern Iraq. “I didn’t agree with their ideology and that’s when I wanted to escape”. “I think, so far, we have trained 3,000 Peshmergas in our counter-IED program in particular”, he said.
Advertisement
Khweis said that after a month in Mosul, he found someone who promised to get him to the Turkish border and he sought out the Kurds because he thought they would get him to America.
Mohamad Jamal Khweis, 26, a native of Virginia, surrendered this week to Iraqi Kurdish forces, saying he had become disenchanted with the militant group. “On the way there I regretted, and I wanted to go back home”.
Mohamad Jamal Khweis was captured by Kurdish Peshmerga forces in northern Iraq earlier this week, though some earlier reports claimed the apprehension took place in late February.
However, he was apprehended by the Kurdish forces as he attempted to enter the Kurdistan region in the village near Tal Afar, Golat.
Kweis said he traveled from the USA to London in December and continued to Amsterdam and then Turkey.
Sixty-eight people have been indicted because of alleged involvement in Isis, of whom 18 have been convicted, with an average sentence of 10 years three months, according to figures published this week by Center on National Security at Fordham University. “He told me he will take me close to Turkey’s border”.
“After things didn’t work out”, the young man said, “I didn’t see myself living in that environment”.
“It is not like Western countries”.
US officials are extremely interested in interviewing Khweis, who is believed to be the first American fighting with the group to have ever surrendered in the field.
This story sounds very hard to believe, at least everything right up to the disillusionment with ISIS life in Mosul and the desire to get back out.
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.
“Daesh, ISIS, ISIL, they don’t represent the religion”, he said, using other names for the Islamic State.
Khweis said a friend told him the way to Sinjar, and he tried to stay near territory he knew was under Kurdish control. (ISIS is trying to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as are rebel groups in the country.) Chesney said, however, that such a prosecution would be politically awkward since the Obama administration is also seeking Assad’s ouster.
Khweis said that he didn’t take to his sharia studies, didn’t like his imam, and eventually came to the same conclusion that most of the planet figured out a long time ago: ISIS does not represent Islam.
Advertisement
It’s at this point that anyone who doesn’t want to live in a brutal theocratic dictatorship enforced by radical terrorists and homicidal maniacs would perhaps speak up and say, “Maybe we should look at …”
