VIDEO: IS teenagers de-radicalized in Kurdistan reform center
The Kurdistan Region Security Forces (Asaiysh) arrested nearly 200 teenagers and adults who were formerly recruited by the Islamic State (IS).
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) – The Kurdistan Region Security Forces (Asaiysh) arrested nearly 200 teenagers and adults who were formerly recruited by the Islamic State (IS).
A Kurdistan24 Correspondent Goran Shakhawan visited the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Reform Center in Erbil where 195 teenagers and adults have been detained for collaborating with IS extremists.
Speaking to Kurdistan24, the detainees denied allegations of being tortured by the Kurdish security forces.
One of the young prisoners told Kurdistan24 that IS has been using religion to encourage the adults and teenagers to work for them. He claimed that IS used mosques to gather teenagers and motivate them to wage jihad.
“Da’esh [IS] fighters came to our shop three times. They hit me a lot and kept asking me to join them in fighting Iraqi and Peshmerga force,” said one of the detained teenagers to Kurdistan24. “They told me that they would give me a car and a wife.”
He mentioned that he was taken to the town of Qayyarah in southern Mosul where he was taught how to fight. “I got bored, and I surrendered myself to Peshmerga forces.”
Another detained teenager told Kurdistan24 that moving from IS-controlled areas to the Kurdistan Region was like moving to a “totally different world.”
According to the Director of the Center Deeman Mohammed Bayiz the teenagers have daily lectures on why IS lessons were misleading and the rest of the time they play games and watch movies.
“We have some effective programs and plans for them. We have special experts in the field of religion and social aspects that hold seminars, workshops, and lectures to at least de-radicalize them and send them out of this center to live normal lives, like other people,” Bayiz told Kurdistan24.
After the IS occupied Mosul in June 2014, they started to change the education system in the area to a system that served their extremist ideology which was indoctrinating teenagers to wage jihad against Iraqi and Kurdish troops.
Since then, the IS has lost most of the territory it controlled, and the group continues to shrink as the security forces launched the military operation on Oct. 17, 2016, to liberate Mosul.
Combating the radical ideology of the IS is one of the objectives of the KRG to fight terrorism and prevent jihadist groups from re-emerging in the country.
Editing by Ava Homa
(Baxtiyar Goran contributed to this report)