I would not normally quote so much of an article from a news outlet that I wish to criticise, but this story about captured ISIS ‘Britons is such a doozy that it needs to be done. It is so full of hand-wringing that it is difficult to take out just one or two parts of it to criticise. The journalist in question, Alex Crawford of Sky News, although working under strict security restrictions imposed by Coalition forces when questioning British and Irish Muslims being held by them, seemed far too ready to accept the stories that the captives were telling her. There seemed little acknowledgement in Ms Crawford’s article that what these captives may be saying may not be the truth but may instead be self serving lies. It’s plain to me that those who had joined ISIS or associated groups and then been captured by Coalition forces would, when faced with a journalist, tell the reporter whatever they thought would make their own case stronger. In my view it is a failure of journalism to produce what looks to me and may look to others, like a very one sided story.

I shall reproduce the relevant sections of the Sky News story below with my comments. As is usual policy for this blog the original text of the Sky story is in italics whereas my comments are in plain text. Before I continue I’d like to say that I’m not knocking Ms Crawford for the entirety of her journalistic output, she has a fantastic record for reporting in conflict zones, I am only taking her to task on this particular story. Also the reason I am quoting so much of this story is that it is such a sensitive story involving British Muslims who have travelled to ISIS controlled areas that there is the possibility that the original story may end up being edited or changed by Sky.

Sky News said:

Sky News has been given special access to British and Irish citizens being held in eastern Syria who are accused of fighting for Islamic State (IS).

None of the three – including a doctor who has worked in dozens of NHS hospitals – have been seen or heard on British television since they were arrested by the US-led coalition forces who are fighting IS in the region.

Is the fact that they have not been paraded in front of the media a surprise? These people are after all individuals who have been captured by Coalition forces or have surrendered to Coalition forces. It’s rare for any prisoner in this situation or generally to be allowed access to the media. In addition there are some restrictions under the Geneva Convention regarding showing close up images of Prisoners of War and showing them in ‘insulting or humiliating circumstances’. Although this Geneva Convention restriction may not apply in this case, the Convention may be something that is uppermost in the minds of those holding these prisoners.

Two are British medics – one being the doctor, the other a pharmacist from Birmingham – and the third is an Irish citizen who encouraged his wife and child to join him with the extremists.

Just the sort of fine upstanding citizens that Western nations such as Britain and Ireland should be welcoming back into their lands – or rather not. After all what sort of moron encourages their wife and child to travel with him to a war zone and in addition to that a war zone run by the violent savages of ISIS?

All three are now begging their governments to intervene to get them out of jail in the war zone where they are being held and take them back home.

To paraphrase the statement given by the late Mandy Rice Davies during her evidence in the trial of Stephen Ward during the Profumo Affair – ‘Well he would say that wouldn’t he?’ Of course this trio are desperate to come back to the UK and to Ireland, this will after all be a much more comfortable option than being a POW in a conflict zone.

The plight of thousands of foreigners accused of joining the caliphate is a major headache for their home countries, as many of the governments view them as a potential danger after years spent under the control of extremists.

It’s not just the governments of the nations that these radicals have come from that are worried. There seem to be an increasing number of ordinary citizens and subjects of various nations, especially European nations, who are scared that these ex ISIS types will end up as a future security problem.

But all three insist they pose no risk and are simply desperate to resume their former lives.

And I’ve got a lovely bascule bridge on the River Thames to sell you if you are interested. I wonder how many are, along with me, reading this statement and thinking ‘a likely story’. These men and women went out to ISIS controlled territory not with a recognised aid agency such as the Red Cross or Red Crescent but as individuals. I’m sorry but these people are suspect whatever they say.

Interviews with them were conducted separately and at different times in two separate locations, both on Kurdish bases with a coalition presence throughout.

Sometimes one, two or three men in uniform were in the room and we were instructed not to film them.

In two out of the three interviews, a member of the coalition forces recorded them.

Sky News was also asked to sign a form agreeing not to ask questions about the conditions of their detention.

I will put aside any criticism of Sky for a moment to commend them for outlining the conditions attached to these interviews. I believe that it is both right and proper that when journalists are working under conditions of restriction that they state that they are working under such conditions and to let the readers draw their own conclusion from this. I must admit I am personally bothered by the reporting condition that forbids asking about the conditions of the prisoner’s detention. At worst this could mean that the prisoners are being abused, however these conditions could have been imposed to avoid the men disclosing where they are being held in order to stop any rescue attempts by ISIS.

But all three men did tentatively broach the subject without a prompt and each spoke about the cold, cramped conditions and poor food.

I’m afraid that these conditions are par for the course with Prisoners of War.

They also all spoke about dozens of fellow foreign IS suspects being held alongside them, including US, French, German and Russian nationals.

I bet all these foreign nationals are Muslims of various shades of extremist point of view?

Mohammed Anwar Miah, 40, is the qualified pharmacist from Birmingham.

He first went to Syria in 2014, seemingly after being investigated and struck off by the General Pharmaceutical Council for inventing false employees at the pharmacy where he worked.

Yep. Of course a Muslim. Oh great a dodgy fraudster who has been struck off the pharmacy list. Just the sort of person we should be allowing back into the UK, or rather not. He will not be able to work in his chosen profession that of pharmacist because he has been proven to be dodgy so the likelihood is that it will be the long suffering British taxpayer who will end up supporting him via welfare.

Little has been seen of him since a short recording of his arrest last August appeared online a few weeks later.

The clip, which appears to be from Snapchat, shows him blindfolded with his hands tied behind his back.

I refer readers again to the statement above regarding how usual it is for POWs not to be seen and the restrictions on the Geneva Convention on picturing POWs in humiliating situations.

He is asked to identify himself and he insists he travelled to Syria to help with humanitarian work.

A likely story. If he had gone out to this conflict zone under the auspices of a recognised aid agency then I might be tempted to believe his story. But, as he just upped and went to the conflict zone of Syria on his own, then I’m going to be suspicious of his story.

Asked if he joined “daesh” (a derogatory term for IS), he says he worked in a hospital in an IS-controlled area.

Even more suspicious,

In his interview with Sky News, he did not want to talk about the circumstances of his dismissal from work, saying only it was ‘”complicated”, and denied he was disenchanted with Britain.

No it’s not ‘complicated’ at all. This man ripped off his employer and probably the taxpayer as well and got caught doing it.

But he admitted that if he had not lost his job, he probably would not have gone to Syria.

Lots of people lose their jobs and some people, like this pharmacist, lose their jobs due to their own greed and stupidity, but most normal people find another job. Normal people do not up sticks and move to a conflict zone ruled by some of the most violent Islamic savages on Earth.

“I was not supporting IS in any way,” he said.

Then why go and work as an individual and not as part of an aid agency or even go to a Kurdish area and provide medical and pharmaceutical expertise there? Why choose to go to an ISIS controlled area?

“Had I been there or not been there I would not have benefited them. The people who benefited from me were the local civilians, just the local people.”

He could have helped civilians by going to Turkey and volunteering in one of the refugee camps there rather than crossing over into ISIS controlled territory.

When asked if he had seen any news in the three-and-a-half years he was in IS territory, which catalogued the executions, amputations and floggings that the terror group carried out, he said: “Very, very little. Very, very little.

“When I first got there, the internet was always very weak and then they went through a period where they said the internet is not allowed. And then they said TV is not allowed too.

I know I may be being overly cynical here but it could be that this man is trying to minimise his involvement with ISIS. We’ve seen this sort of minimisation of guilt before, most notably following World War II when those who had taken part in Nazi atrocities or who had played a part in the Nazi regime tried desperately to minimise their involvement in atrocities when captured by the Allies. This man’s comment about how he ‘saw little’ of ISIS’s bestial behaviour may well be an attempt to draw attention away from his involvement with ISIS.

“They removed everybody’s dishes and they put them in one place and it was forbidden to have a TV in your house.”

This comment still does not answer the question as to whether he saw or heard of any news, which does not have to be deliverer by electronic means, of Islamic State atrocities. People talk, people gossip and I find it difficult to believe that he was living and working in an ISIS controlled area but saw ‘very little’ when it came to ISIS atrocities.

He met and married a Syrian woman while there and they had one child.

His wife was pregnant with another when he said they decided to try to leave the area.

No. I’m afraid I still don’t have sympathy for him or his family. He must have felt pretty settled in ISIS territory to marry and settle down there and have children. It’s plain to me that he may only have thought of bailing out of ISIS territory when he realised that ISIS was going to lose the war. Personally I don’t want this family to come to the UK. There is a strong likelihood that they may end up as either a threat or a burden to the rest of us.

He said: “It’s very difficult to leave. It’s very dangerous to leave.

He must have known how dangerous it was before he went there.

“Even when I left I handed myself in, I wasn’t captured. I left in August 2018 and me, my wife and my child, we had to literally escape without telling anybody.”

As soon as coalition forces saw him, he was segregated, separated from his wife and arrested as an IS suspect.

Fair enough. The WWII Allies kept many Axis troops and sometimes high profile families in custody until their stories could be properly checked and any allegations of them could be tried in a court.

But he insists he is a moderate British Muslim – that is how he describes himself.

We only have his word that he is moderate. He could be bullshitting.

He said: “I can say to everybody in Britain that I’m not an IS fighter. I’m not a dangerous person. I came here to do humanitarian work. I have hurt nobody. I have done nothing wrong. I worked in a hospital.

“People have labelled me with IS because the area was controlled by IS. But I just did my job working in a hospital. I’m not a danger to anybody. I did humanitarian work and if they want evidence, I mean the evidence is there.”

Can we be 100% sure of this claim? Sadly I think we cannot be that sure that what he is saying is the truth.

He is clearly clinging to the hope that the British authorities will repatriate him, insisting he has done no wrong but ready to answer any questions and face whatever justice his compatriots decide he needs to face.

Tell him to piss off, Britain doesn’t need him. He made the choice to go to an ISIS controlled area as an individual and without being part of a recognised aid agency. This man, like his story, is suspect. He’s obviously clinging to the hope that he will be brought to Britain and tried here because he knows he will get a better deal than if he stayed in Syria. I’ve little doubt that if he is brought back to face trial then there will be a tsunami of left leaning Human Rights Lawyers queuing up to represent him in court.

The other medic – who appeared to have been brought to the interview separately – is Muhammad Saqib Raza.

He strode into the interview room and immediately asked me for any identification papers to prove who I am. I handed him my press card and my passport – he appeared not to have been told he would be speaking to us.

His story is an extraordinary one, but he asked: “Why would I make this up? This is my story and I can’t change it.”

I will tell you why Muhammad Saqib Raza may have made up his story and that is because he backed the wrong side and now has a lot of regret for doing so.

The Pakistan-born doctor, who moved to England in 2008 and gained British citizenship under the highly skilled migrants programme, worked for eight years in the NHS.

It didn’t seem to take him long to go from skilled migrant working in the NHS to travelling to a war zone on his own and without any apparent backing from some of the many NGO’s that have been working in the area tending to the medical needs of those displaced into Turkey by the Syrian conflict.

He travelled up and down England doing locum work in more than 20 NHS hospitals.

Maybe it is time for the NHS to tighten up recruitment procedures? The last thing Britons want is for any more patients who use this crumbling and sclerotic service to be told ‘Sorry your Doctor is not available, he’s gone of to Syria on a humanitarian exercise/jihad (delete not applicable) ’

He said he was duped into crossing into Syria after being told he could help Muslims and gain valuable work experience with treating war injuries in the Turkish-Syrian border town of Jarabulus.

Hmmm! I’m not sure I believe this tale either. If he had gone with a recognised agency and was indeed captured by ISIS then there would have quite rightly been a fuss about this. I can understand a medic wanting to get more experience in treating trauma injuries but he could have got similar experience working at the Royal London Hospital in Khan’s London where many of the victims of London’s ever growing number of knife, gun and acid attacks get taken.

Instead, he ended up being taken under armed guard to Raqqa, being sold to IS, and spending more than a year in and out of first IS prisons, then coalition jails.

He is growing ever more desperate, and asked: “Why am I still sitting in prison? Why am I not being given any justice?

The question I have to ask here is why did ISIS just capture and hold him and not make use of his valuable and vital medical abilities? Something really doesn’t smell right here.

“Is there no justice? Britain is one of the strongest countries in the world. And why has my country abandoned me when I needed it the most?”

Sorry but he abandoned his chosen country, the United Kingdom when he swanned off to the Syrian conflict. Britain gave this man a chance to work, to earn and to contribute to a civilised nation but he chucked it all away. That is not the British government’s fault, the blame for his situation lies fairly and squarely with him.

The article by Alex Crawford continues in a similar vein with captured individuals swearing blind that they ‘didn’t do nothing, honest guv’nor’. Whilst I admit that this story by Ms Crawford is a major scoop, her story merely lets the prisoners tell their story but gives no real or substantial challenge to their narratives. Although I appreciate that these may have been short interviews carried out in unusual and highly controlled circumstances, I would have liked to have seen more detailed questions, not only about their motivation to go to Syria and in particular to ISIS controlled territory but also more probing questions on their activities whilst in Syria.

My main beef with this story is that it is a hand-wringing, tug at the heartstrings one when what may have been better is a story that treated these interviewees and their stories in a much more cynical manner. It is almost as if this story has been designed to foster a view among the story’s readership that these men are merely ignorant but essentially innocent fools who should really be forgiven for their foolishness. If you wanted to design a story to convince the public that ex-ISIS types are not a problem and were misguided and naive humanitarians, then this is how such a narrative could be constructed. I would like to see the claims of these men tested in open court but I’m not prepared to countenance them being brought to the UK for this to happen, the risk that they could slip away from justice or if they are dodgy cause problems is too great.

I’ve known many people over the years who have undertaken humanitarian work, sometimes in dangerous and challenging areas, but they have done it working with others who are experienced in dealing with and working in conflict situations. The fact that these men seem to have just upped and gone to Syria without any proper training or back up and have gone to areas controlled by one of the most bestial Islamic terror groups on the planet, leads me inexorably to being cynical about them. These men are appealing for the British and Irish governments to rescue them, yet neither of these governments told them to go to Syria and definitely did not tell them to go to ISIS zones. I know it may sound harsh to some but they have made their stinking bed by travelling to Syria and it may be better for the rest of us, although obviously not for these individuals, if we left them to lie in the bed they’ve made for themselves.