We lost our son to Isil, now we pay for his sins

Relatives of men killed fighting for the jihadists now find that liberation only brings more misery

WHEN Rislia and Rahem Hassan’s teenage son came home one day dressed in Afghan robes and talking about becoming a martyr for the cause, they knew they had lost him to Isil.

Seventeen-year-old Maher had been studying to become an engineer when the jihadists seized the family’s home town of Imam Gharbi in the summer of 2014. They forced its residents to pledge allegiance to the group and disavow the Shia-led government in Baghdad.

“All we understood was that they were men with guns, who were telling us they were a Sunni group that was here to protect us,” said Mr Hassan, 50.

The militants closed down all the schools and held their own classes in local mosques.

Most of the men were forbidden to work and Mr Hassan lost his job as an electrician. His eldest son, Mohammed, had his studies at Mosul University stopped. Mrs Hassan and her three daughters were made to wear black niqabs and were whipped if they ever revealed more than their eyes.

In the early days, Maher privately cursed the group but after six months of lectures, something changed. “Maher came to us last February and told us the only way to please God was for him to become a martyr,” said Mr Hassan, speaking from a refugee camp in Tinah, 40 miles south of Mosul.

“We shook him to see if we could get any sense out of him, but he was like a zombie. He was brainwashed,” he said. “They offered him 65,000 Iraq dinars (£45) and promised he would meet the Prophet in heaven.”

Mr Hassan threw his son out that day and never saw him again. He had seen how Isil had brutalised people and could not watch his son do the same.

He was told Maher was sent south to fight near Baghdad. Three months later the news reached him that he had been killed in a US air strike.

“I was relieved, which no mother should feel,” Mrs Hassan, 40, said. “But this way he couldn’t hurt anyone else… This is not what I taught him, there is no Islam in this.”

Last month the Iraqi army recaptured their town, but they quickly realised that this was only the start, not the end, of their ordeal.

Mr Hassan and all his male relatives were sent to the town of Qayyarah, where they were questioned by soldiers about links to Isil. He swore never to have supported the group and said Maher had brought shame on the family.

Suspicion runs so deep, however, that they were told that the men and boys would not be allowed to return home. And the women want to keep the family together, so they remain trapped at the camp, some two miles from their town.

It is full of families like the Hassans. The mothers, sisters, fathers and grandfathers of dead Isil fighters, all living with the consequences of their actions.

Now they also face a growing resentment among local residents. “They say we should not be allowed food or given shelter, that we are supporters of Daesh,” said Mrs Hassan, using the Arabic name for the group.

“Our eight-year-old daughter tried to go and buy some milk and bread, but they spat at her and told her she was not welcome. We are forever marked by the sins of our son.”

Iraqi paramilitary forces launched an operation yesterday to cut Isil’s supply lines between Mosul and neighbouring Syria. The Shia-dominated Hashed al-Shaabi, began a push on the town of Tal Afar on the western approach to the city, encircling Mosul.