Kurdish forces arrest six foreign ISIS fighters in northern Syria

The Kurdish forces said it would continue to target the Islamic State’s sleeper cells which still carry out insurgency attacks.

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Saturday said it captured six foreign Islamic State fighters in an operation to remove the terrorists in their last pocket in Syria’s Deir al-Zor province.

The press office of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), who make a majority of the SDF, said its forces captured six foreign Islamic State fighters “of various nationalities who had actively participated in terrorist activities on behalf of the group for years.”

The Kurdish forces also revealed the names and nationalities of the detainees: Dmitry Simonov (Abu Isa al-Rusi), Russia; Mahmoud Se’id Ateb (Abu Mushab al-Almani), Germany; Nicholas Joseph Lee (Abu Yousuf al-Amriki), Latin America; Emrah Rıfat Ozanoğlu (Abu Fatima al-Turki), Turkey; Abrar Mohammad (Abu Zubair al-Sweidi), Sweden; Hisham al-Arabi (Abu Maryam al-Maghribi), Morocco.

The YPG said it will continue to target the Islamic State’s sleeper cells which carry out insurgency attacks as an operation to clear the remaining fighters from the militant group’s last pocket in northern Syria is ongoing.

A photo the Kurdish forces released shows the six captured Islamic State fighters. (Photo: YPG Press Office)
A photo the Kurdish forces released shows the six captured Islamic State fighters. (Photo: YPG Press Office)

Abdul Hamid al-Muhabash, the co-chair of the Democratic Autonomous Administration (DAA) in northeastern Syria, said his administration had called on various countries to take back their citizens with connections to the Islamic State.

“The administration and the Syrian people demand of the states from which these ISIS fighters belong – more than 50 nationalities in all – to judge them according to their constitutions,” Muhabash told Kurdistan 24 on Thursday.

He underlined that these extremists “committed crimes against the Syrian people and killed them, including many civilians and children,” adding that over 8,000 SDF fighters were martyred.

According to Muhabash, it is not up to his administration to put Islamic State fighters on trial. Instead, he contended: “They should return to their countries.” 

In a December press conference, the official said 2,622 foreign nationals, “including 584 women and 1,248 children from 46 nationalities,” were being held in camps and prisons under the DAA’s control.

That number is quickly growing as the Islamic State is almost completely defeated in its last remaining pocket in Deir al-Zor. 

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany