Chemist who says he only did humanitarian work in Syria
BRITISH pharmacist Mohammed Anwar Miah renamed himself Abu Obayda al-Britannia once inside Islamic State’s self-styled caliphate.
He claimed he left his family home in Birmingham, where he was born, in September 2014 to travel to Syria to carry out humanitarian work.
The 40-year-old re-emerged in video footage in September 2018 when he was detained in eastern Syria on suspicion of fighting for the terror group.
Footage showed him blindfolded and handcuffed as he denied being an IS fighter, saying he was just ‘helping the people’ in hospitals.
He is currently languishing in a prison in north-eastern Syria.
Miah was left jobless in 2013 after he was struck off the register for inventing ‘phantom’ employees to enable him to work more hours in contravention of EU legislation.
In his first newspaper interview, with the Daily Mail in February, he said: ‘They took away something I worked for the whole of my life. They punished me so harshly.’
Miah crossed the border from Turkey on September 15, 2014.
Speaking with a Midlands accent, Miah, whose family is of Bangladeshi origin, said he married a Syrian teenager in the town of Mayadin and had two children with her.
He has not met his second child because he was detained when his wife was five months pregnant. He added that his children were British citizens and he would like them to go back to the UK with him.
Miah said he was innocent of any crimes and had travelled to the war zone to carry out ‘humanitarian’ work. He added: ‘I’m not a danger to the public. But if they feel that I am a danger to the public I am more than happy to enter into any rehabilitation programme.’
Miah said he worked in a hospital in IS-held Mayadin, but had never treated a fighter unless by mistake because they were wearing civilian clothes.
He said the worst thing he ever saw was a man being forced to stand in a cage and being humiliated for smoking a cigarette.
‘I came here to do humanitarian work, I came here with that intention and that’s what I did. I didn’t have any political or military involvement. I did not take part in any of these atrocities or incited any hatred or made any videos. I have never killed or hurt anybody.’
Miah claimed that in September last year he and his pregnant wife decided to leave in the middle of the night, taking their nine-monthold daughter, Mariam, with them.
He was detained near the town of Hajin in Deir Ezzor province, eastern Syria, by opposition Syrian Democratic Forces.
‘I’m not a danger to the public’