City man held in jail

PHOTOS have emerged of overcrowded prison conditions in a detention centre thought to contain alleged Islamic State soldiers from Wales.

It is not known if Cardiff’s Aseel Muthana and his Welsh colleagues are in any of the photos, but he has declared his wish to return home to the Welsh capital.

Pictures from within the Kurdish detention centre for suspected Islamic State (IS) members show squalid and cramped conditions.

There are estimated to be 5,000 inmates at the jail, with most of them appearing to be malnourished, haggard and packed in like battery hens.

Looking at the grim faces of the men, you would never know that some of them were the alleged heads of an organisation that once controlled vast swathes of Iraq and Syria.

Accused of horrific crimes like beheading, rape and genocide, the terrorist group has been severely wounded by the combined effort of international forces, including the Kurds.

The pictures from AFP (Agence FrancePresse) show men from all over the world, including Syria, Iraq, France and Germany.

At least three people from the Welsh capital are thought to be imprisoned.

Aseel Muthana worked selling icecream in Cardiff before leaving his family and travelling to Syria in 2014, then aged 17.

He followed his brother, Nasser Muthana, and a friend, Reyaad Khan, who had joined the brutal extremist group months earlier.

They became some of Britain’s most high-profile IS members.

Inside the prison, Muthana told ITV News earlier this year that he was lured into going to Syria by propaganda.

He claimed he would be helping Syria’s poor by fighting on the side of IS.

“Back then, when I first came to IS, you have to understand I came way before the caliphate was pronounced,” he said.

“Before all of these beheading videos, before all of the burnings happened, before any of that stuff.

“We came when IS propaganda and IS