TRADE FOR BODY, ISIL TELLS FAMILY
23-year-old volunteered with Kurdish forces
ISIL is trying to “make a deal” in exchange for handing over the body of a Canadian it killed in Syria two weeks ago, his family said Wednesday.
“Canada’s working on it,” said the sister of Nazzareno Tassone, a 23- year- old volunteer f i ghter who was killed when the terrorist group attacked his position on Dec. 21.
Kurdish community leaders in Toronto told the Niagara Falls family that ISIL “still had his body and they want to make a deal to hand it over,” Tassone’s sister Giustina said.
She said she did not know the details of ISIL’s demands but “we’ve been told that sometimes they either hand over money or they hand over ISIL bodies.”
The family has spoken to their MP, and the Canadian embassy in Turkey was inf ormed, she said. “They know what’s going on and they’re working on getting him back.”
Tassone left Edmont on in June to j oin t he People’s Protection Units, also known as the YPG, the Kurdish militia that has been fighting ISIL in the region of northern Syria they call Rojava.
“He told me he wanted to go to Rojava to fight Daesh,” said another international fighter who met him there, using another name for ISIL. “He felt Canada wasn’t doing enough to help so it was his job to step up.”
Tassone was “pretty idiosyncratic — he didn’t take part in the Kurdish communal life as much,” said the fighter, who asked to be identified by his nom de guerre, Salahaddin Deniz.
“But the Kurds gave him a pass and liked him because even though he couldn’t speak the language beyond a few words he could still make them laugh and was a good guy to have when the muck hit the fan.”
On Dec. 22, t he I SIL propaganda outfit Amaq posted photos of what it said were fighters it had killed in Syria’s Raqqah province. It said two were Westerners. Several sources said one of the images showed Tassone.
The YPG waited until Tuesday to announce that two volunteers had indeed died in a Dec. 21 clash, Tassone and Ryan Lock, a British citizen. A letter delivered to Tassone’s family Tuesday said the pair “were out on an advance post and at nighttime they were ambushed by ISIS,” the sister said.
The family has launched a Facebook page, “Bring Nazzareno Tassone Home,” to keep the issue in the spotlight. “My brother was killed by ISIS on Dec 21st. He is being held by ISIS. Making this page so the Canadian government knows to bring him home ASAP,” it reads.
“We’re hoping it happens in a timely manner,” the sister said. “My brother fought for what was right and that’s why he went over there. That’s what he liked about the army was that they fought for what was right,” she said.
“But as much as he was into the army my brother was a goofball. Me and him joked, we played video games a lot together. We were those brothers and sisters who would argue but at the end of the day we still loved each other.”
Hundreds of international volunteers, including dozens of Canadians, have made their way to Syria and Iraq to help Kurdish forces battle ISIL. Tassone is the second of the Canadians to die after John Robert Gallagher, killed Nov. 4, 2015.