Escape from Isil: how one British fighter tried (and failed) to flee Syria
Briton who joined Daesh found that quitting the terrorist group was much tougher than signing-up
THE BRITISH Isil fighter was so confident he would make it out of Syria to Turkey that he packed little more than a change of clothes, a phone and a torch.
Shabazz Suleman had paid the right people: $1,000 (£750) to a smuggler for the ride to the border and a couple of hundred more to another for a forged Syrian ID.
But after bribing guards at the first two rebel-held checkpoints along the road out of Raqqa, his heavily accented Arabic saw him rumbled at the third.
“I had attempted to leave many times during the years I was with Isil,” Suleman, 22, from High Wycombe, told The
Daily Telegraph from a prison run by the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in the border town of Jarablus. “But I knew this would be my best chance as the battle was going very badly.
“It was an exodus. I knew I had to get out and try to get back to the UK, but I hadn’t really thought through the plan.”
As Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s (Isil’s) once-vast caliphate crumbles, thousands of fighters are looking for a way out and foreign governments are bracing themselves for an influx of returnees.
To explore what happens when Isil fighters decide to leave the group’s former territory – and what happens when they fail, The Telegraph spoke to five people smugglers operating along the Turkish border as well as military commanders in northern Syria and a security official who runs safe houses for Isil defectors.
Suleman’s guards find it hard to believe that the slight, soft-spoken Briton in their custody was a member of the world’s most feared terrorist group. He had a privileged upbringing, graduating from the Royal Grammar School in Buckinghamshire with good marks. But instead of taking up a place at university as his parents, originally from Pakistan, had hoped, Suleman left the UK for Syria in the summer of 2014.
He said he wanted to help the groups fighting President Bashar al-assad and was brainwashed by the jihadists’ “persuasive propaganda campaign”.
After weapons training, he was sent to fight Kurdish groups near the Iraqi border. He claimed to have been a reservist, never once firing his weapon.
It was during this time, after five months with Isil, that he became disillusioned. When he returned from the front line he asked to quit, but was imprisoned under a stadium in the centre of Raqqa, Isil’s capital at the time.
Suleman said that after a few weeks of watching people being tortured he agreed to stay, but took a job with the military police, keeping public order.
Weeks before Raqqa came under attack from the Us-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in June, Suleman and other Western fighters were ordered to retreat to their territory in the province of Deir Ezzor to the east.
He spent the next few months doing little more than playing Playstation at home with his Syrian housemates. “I think Isil had given up getting me to fight,” he laughed. “It was the beginning of the end. Everyone knew Isil was done. Most other British fighters were dead. The last time I saw a British guy must have been the end of 2016.”
Suleman befriended a Syrian family at a restaurant in Deir Ezzor, and after convincing them that he wanted to leave the jihadist group they began to hatch an escape plan together. The family obtained the telephone number of a smuggler outside Isil territory and arranged to be picked up by car after dark on Oct 11. Suleman shaved his long beard, threw out his fatigues and packed a small rucksack.
They passed two checkpoints along the route in the formerly Isil-held towns of Tabqa and Manbij. He said they bribed SDF fighters to allow them through. “The PKK (SDF) don’t really care who they let out. They just don’t want it to be their problem,” he said. “Everyone knows they’d rather send Isil fighters to an FSA (Free Syrian Army) area than fight us.”
They were then stopped at Aoun aldaddat checkpoint, south of Jarablus, the last one before the Turkish border.
Guards from the Liwa al-shimal, or Northern Brigade, a rebel group which operates under the umbrella of the FSA, realised he was a foreign fighter and arrested him on the spot.
“He spoke a bit of Arabic but it was broken and he clearly was not from here,” said Omar al-abd of the Northern Brigade, which is holding several other fighters including some from France and Denmark.
“He didn’t lie when we asked him who he was. He told us he was with Daesh but that he did not fight,” he said.
Suleman may have been caught, but The Telegraph understands hundreds of Isil members have made it across the border to Turkey in the past year.
Five smugglers operating along the frontier say business has been booming since the SDF moved on Raqqa in June. Between them they have helped dozens find a way to Turkey, using operatives inside and outside Isil-held territory.
However, the journey comes at a cost. That depends on nationality; when Isil was at the height of its power, smugglers were charging Syrian fighters $2-3,000, while foreigners paid $5,000 to $10,000 (£7,400) due to the added risk. Children were half-price.
“When Daesh controlled these territories we had a strict protocol,” one smuggler, who called himself Abu Kashkah, told The Telegraph from a café in the border town of Kilis.
“First of all we made them send us their name, picture and location.
“We had civilian friends living in these areas and we would get them to
‘It was an exodus. I knew I had to get out and back to the UK, but I hadn’t really thought through the plan’
watch them for a few days to check them out. We would follow them to see what they would do to try to gauge if they were really serious about leaving or if they were trying to trick us.
“We would then ask them to move to an empty house in a different neighbourhood, one closer to the edge of Daesh territory. We would watch them there for one or two days to make sure they were alone and were not being followed,” he said.
There can be as many as four or five smugglers involved in a single operation. It is a very dangerous job, he said, and he does not want to take any unnecessary risks – 14 members of his network have been imprisoned and three killed by Isil between 2015 and 2016 after they were caught helping defectors.
“Then they would wait until night, like 3am, and meet them [the defectors] and walk several miles, avoiding Daesh checkpoints, to a waiting car.”
They would provide them with fake
Syrian IDS, bribing guards all the way to the border near the al-rai crossing, west of Jarablus.
He said that in total his network has helped 14 foreign Isil members escape to Turkey in the past 18 months: two Germans, two Belgians, a Dutch fighter, one Pole and several Algerians, as well as two women from Canada and a mother from France with her child.
Another smuggler, who gave his name as Abu Khalid, said he had overseen five successful operations involving French, German, Turkish and Syrian fighters.
Khalid told how he helped a young French-moroccan woman from Marseille and her young daughter leave Raqqa in April.
Sarah Lamharrach’s family travelled to the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep to plead with Khalid to help, offering $10,000 for the journey. The 21-year-old’s French jihadi husband had been killed the month before and she saw a chance to escape.
“I could see that she regretted joining Daesh,” said Khalid. “Her husband had pressured her.
“You should not punish women like her for making mistakes, she had already been punished enough. Most of those who come to us tell us ‘Daesh is not what we thought it would be – we’ve made a big mistake’.”
Some smugglers are in it for the money, while he claims others, like himself, are driven by “ideological motives”. He said he helps fleeing Isil members in order to ensure that they see justice in their home countries. “If they are caught in Syria they might bribe their way out of prison...they are more likely to go to court and be sentenced for their crimes in Europe and the West,” he said.
“Also, the less Daesh there are in Syria, the better it is for us.”
Thousands of foreign fighters crossed through the once-porous 500- mile Turkish border to get to Syria during the height of Isil’s brutal reign, from 2013 to 2016. By effectively turning a blind eye, Turkey helped the extremist group expand as it built its self-declared caliphate.
Under pressure from the US and EU, Ankara last year began to tighten its frontier with concrete walls, wire fencing and more guards, forcing the smugglers to come up with increasingly inventive ways to get across.
They are now left with two main routes out of northwestern Syria: near the al-rai crossing, between the cities of Azaz and Jarablus, and the Idlibantakya route, which is mountainous and much more dangerous.
Both routes must be taken at night, the smugglers say. Abu Ahmed, a smuggler operating around Idlib, says he sees an increase in activity in the winter as fog offers greater cover.
Where smugglers can charge up to $4,000 to cross near al-rai, the Idlib route can cost as little as $500.
“We walk with them through the night, changing the route every few days,” said Ahmed, who coordinates smugglers in Idlib.
When asked to estimate how many Isil fighters were in northern Syria still looking to cross, each smuggler gave a number of around 2,000 to 3,000, among them “a few dozen” Europeans.
“Sometimes I get 10 messages a day from people who need our services, but I can’t help them all,” says Ahmed.
FSA groups say they are intercepting increasing numbers of Isil fighters at checkpoints outside Raqqa. They maintain that for every one who does manage to escape across the border, another gets caught trying.
The question then is what to do with them all.
The Syrian opposition group holding Suleman said the UK government had yet to make contact with them and had not made any formal extradition request to Turkey.
“We have tried for six weeks to contact the British, but it seems they are not very interested in having him back,” said Mr Abd. “We will just have to look after him for now, I guess.”
Suleman said he would only return to Britain if he can strike a deal to ensure a lenient sentence. Otherwise, he would prefer to stay in Syria, where his hosts appear to be keeping him clothed and well fed.
“They respect me,” he said. “They treat me well.”
While some countries, including Qatar and Kuwait, have reportedly offered to pay to have their citizens returned, others have refused to take Isil suspects back.
Former Soviet states such as Ukraine, the Chechen republic, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, which suffer from their own radical Islamist problems, have turned down Turkey’s requests that they extradite their nationals. While Europeans caught by Turkish border guards are arrested and their embassies contacted, jihadists from these countries are now simply being turned back to Syria.
Official estimates suggest that only a third of those foreign fighters who have left Syria and Iraq are in prison. The rest have either made it home without entering into the criminal justice system or, in contravention of international law, been deported to a third country and have disappeared.
Ankara has deported a number of foreign fighters to Malaysia, a choice destination because it is predominantly Muslim and offers visa-free entry to many of the countries which are refusing their nationals.
More than 30 Isil suspects were flown to Kuala Lumpur, which has since lost track of them.
Experts warn that while the focus is on foreign fighters returning, the real risk could be from Isil deportees who did not go home and are now unaccounted for.
‘Sometimes I get 10 messages a day from people who need our services…but I can’t help them all’