My husband: the Kiwi jihadist
Mark Taylor was a ‘‘very soft man’’ who ‘‘needs love’’, but he also harboured an unstable character and a deep-seated dissatisfaction over his portrayal as a bumbling jihadist.
That’s the characterisation one of Taylor’s former wives gave of the Isis militant, back in 2014, in a neverbefore-published interview with
Stuff.
At that stage, he had already rushed off to join the terrorist organisation, at a time when the actions of its believers had the entire world recoiling in horror – their public beheadings, a level of brutality never before seen.
The Indonesian woman, whom
Stuff has decided not to name, revealed conflicted insights into the man who had already left her and her children in search of multiple Muslim wives and ‘‘glory in martyrdom’’.
More recently, he resurfaced after a years-long absence from the public radar, expressing his regret at never being in the financial position to ever purchase a Yazidi woman as a slave.
It’s unclear the extent to which he ever dropped off our spies’ radar.
The last time he was in the public eye was 2015, when he dropped a Youtube video calling for the random slayings of police officers and New Zealand soldiers during Anzac Day.
He made headlines after mistakenly tweeting with his geo-tagging function still activated, thereby giving away the co-ordinates of their exact location. In 2017, the United States declared Taylor a ‘‘global terrorist’’.
Now, the New Zealand Government – with the apparent support of the Opposition – has all but washed its hands of him. He has given an interview to Australia’s ABC, from the confines of a Kurdish prison on the northern Syrian border.
The Government’s position is clear: there he’ll stay unless he can get himself free of prison into neighbouring Turkey, where New Zealand has a diplomatic prison.
If he manages that, the Government will honour its obligations under international law given it can’t strip Taylor of his citizenship and render him stateless.
He’ll be given the appropriate documents to get home, but no assistance to make the journey. If he somehow makes it back to New Zealand, there will be the full force of the law waiting for him.
‘‘New Zealand has made it very clear that New Zealanders should not travel to Syria. Further, it is clear that it is unlawful to join and fight with a terrorist organisation as Mark Taylor has done,’’ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said.
‘‘This guy made his bed. He’s joined a terrorist organisation, he’s made videos encouraging people to hurt police – he’s just not the kind of person if we can [help it], that we’d want back,’’ Opposition leader Simon Bridges said.
Foreign Minister Winston Peters was even more forthright.
‘‘He forfeited any right [to return], in my view that he had, when he joined a terrorist organisation that was a serious challenge to all human rights in this country and other countries as well.’’
It’s unclear whether his former wife remained in contact with Taylor. Requests for comment since, have gone unanswered.
English was not her first language, but in an email conversation with
Stuff in 2014, she spoke of how he was ‘‘misunderstood’’ and lost a lot of confidence because ‘‘the media said he was idiot’’.
But she also admitted she did not like his ‘‘unstable character’’ and unhealthy addiction to video war games.
‘‘He tried to look for a lady for marriage. A Muslim lady and finally he met me. He is a loner and I am a happy person. Contradiction,’’ she said. ‘‘Step by step he got back his self confident [sic] here. He needs love. He is very soft man in heart. Sensitive person. Easy to trust stranger.
‘‘I have problem with his unstable character and addicted to play war game. He played game every day in long hours. He promised to change but finally he can’t. We keep arguing every day about his bad habit and he was unhappy with me being hard on him about it.’’
Taylor’s wife detailed how he decided to look for work in Qatar and Turkey.
‘‘He wants to get a better financial for family. Then he changed his mind to go to Syria to fight like a battle game that he used to play mostly every day. He contacted me after 3 months and says he missed me much finally,’’ she said. ‘‘I lost all my words. I blamed him how stupid he is specially after I knew he burned his own passport! He said a criminal guy wanted his passport book and tried to attacked him to use that passport, so he burned it!’’
She said she thought he needed mental health treatment, back then.
‘‘I have no idea now how to help him out from the danger place,’’ she said. ‘‘I just put trust on Allah about it.’’