‘Kiwi Jihadi’ in Kurdish jail
A New Zealander serving with Islamic State (Isis) has been captured in Syria, reports say.
‘‘Kiwi Jihadi’’ Mark Taylor was being held in a Kurdish prison, the ABC reported.
He told the Australian network he had surrendered because there was no food, no money, and that basic services were pretty much collapsed.
‘‘I was in a pickle myself and had to make a final decision, which was to leave,’’ he said. Isis had been driven back to a small remaining patch of land in the village of Baghouz in eastern Syria, which was being attacked by US-backed forces.
Taylor, 42, who has multiple aliases including Muhammad Daniel, felt he would be jailed in New Zealand – if the country took him back.
‘‘I’m sorry for causing too much trouble and being a bit hot-headed and flamboyant in my approach ... I don’t know if I can go back to New Zealand, but at the end of the day it’s really something I have to live with for the rest of my life,’’ he told the ABC.
He told the network that during his five years with the terrorist group he was not a fighter, but a guard, and had witnessed executions and beheadings. Isis holdout surrounded Militants in Baghouz had been desperately fighting to hang on to the last tiny piece of territory Isis holds.
The group had been deploying snipers, guided missiles and surprise tunnel attacks.
The US-backed force known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) resumed attacks to recapture the area on Saturday (NZ time), after a twoweek pause to allow for the evacuation of civilians.
Retaking the sliver of land would be a milestone in the devastating fouryear campaign to end Isis’ selfproclaimed Islamic caliphate that
Mark Taylor
‘‘I don’t know if I can go back to New Zealand.’’
once straddled vast territory across Syria and Iraq.
Who is Mark Taylor?
Taylor has been based in the Middle East for several years, and has been on the New Zealand Government’s terror radar since at least 2011.
In 2009, he travelled to Pakistan and tried to enter the al-Qaeda stronghold of Wana.
In 2011, he was outed as one of 23 Australian-based residents on a security watchlist after a Wikileaks release.
That same year, then-New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said Taylor was ‘‘someone that has quite a number of restrictions on him for very good reasons’’.
In July 2014, Taylor travelled to Syria, despite being monitored by New Zealand government agencies.
He said then he would remain in Syria until he achieved martyrdom.
Taylor had been an avid social media user. In the past, he has used his online accounts to announce he had burned his New Zealand passport and to encourage others to wage jihad on Anzac Day. In 2015, he accidentally gave away the co-ordinates of Islamic State fighters on Twitter by failing to turn off the location service on his Twitter account.
Taylor also has a LinkedIn profile, under the name Muhammad Daniel, that lists his occupation as an education management professional, and says he is living in the Islamic State.
He said in 2017 he had been teaching English to children in Raqqa since 2014, ‘‘and enjoyed having fun with the students’’.