CAPTURED: British ‘doctor f ighting for ISIS in Syria’
A BRITON who claims to be a doctor has been captured in Syria suspected of fighting for the fanatical terrorist group Islamic State.
Video footage of the man, who speaks with a Birmingham accent, emerged last night on a Twitter account linked to Kurdish militia.
The footage showed him blindfolded being interrogated by Kurdish fighters on a pick-up truck. The man said he was called Anwar Miah and had been in Syria for the last four years.
Asked if he was part of Islamic State, also known as Daesh, he said: ‘I came here to work with the general people and work in general hospitals. I’ve been working in hospitals since I came here.
‘I have been working in areas controlled by Daesh, but I have worked with the general people. They were controlled by Daesh but I was working with the general people. I am a doctor, I am a qualified pharmacist, I studied medicine and pharmacy.’
He was arrested in the city of Deir ez-Zour one month ago, the Kurdish military Twitter channel International Volunteers Report said.
The footage included a caption in French, ‘J’en fais quoi?’, meaning ‘What do I do with this?’
Terrorism experts last night said the video raised troubling questions about how many British extremists were still hiding in Syria and Iraq despite the terror group losing its strongholds of Raqqa and Mosul.
Shiraz Maher of Kings College Lon- don said: ‘The broader question is, how many foreigners got away and survived the fall of Mosul or Raqqa? Where are they today? What are they doing? The idea that we’re coming to the end of this conflict is rebuked by incidents like this.’
Mr Maher, director at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence, said: ‘If this man went to Syria just under four years ago, he went just after the Islamic State Caliphate was declared.
‘He would have had to give bayah [oath of allegiance] to IS, just like you do in a UK citizenship ceremony, so it would make him part of Daesh.’
Miah may have come into contact with other British jihadis. The security services say around 900 Britons have travelled to Syria since 2011, including the executioner Jihadi John killed by an air strike in 2015.