No regret: Captured ISIS fighter wants to come home — but not if he will be judged by Canadian law

by Nazim Baksh, Joana Draghici ·

Some security experts question Canada’s strategy in dealing with returning ISIS members

Before he was captured by Syrian Kurdish forces in February, Canadian Mohammed Khalifa went from being a cog in the ranks of ISIS to its English language voice.

Khalifa, 35, who goes by his ISIS nom de guerre Abu Ridwan, says he would like to return to Canada provided he can bring his non-Canadian wife and their three children.

“This area is no doubt a dangerous area. I’d want to take my family out of there,” Abu Ridwan told The Fifth Estate in an interview from a prison in northern Syria.

But if his return means he will likely face justice in a Canadian court, Abu Ridwan said he would rather remain locked up where he is.

“In terms of going back to be judged, then no.”

While captured ISIS members and their families at home in Canada have been pleading with Ottawa for help to repatriate them home, the country’s handling of the contentious issue has come in for criticism by security experts.

For Abu Ridwan, the desire to live in an Islamic state took him out of Canada six years ago. In the summer of 2013, Abu Ridwan had graduated from Toronto’s Seneca College and had a job with a tech company when he decided to leave it all behind to be a part of the emerging Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

“I was happy coming to a place where we have an Islamic state and we could live in an Islamic state and implement the Sharia law. I was content with what I had and the life I was living.”

Within a few months, he had joined the ranks of ISIS and pledged his allegiance to its leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.

His Arabic and English language skills caught the attention of ISIS commanders and he was recruited to the group’s media department headquartered in the city of Raqqa.

“We come in the morning and we leave later in the day. If you finish your work, you might leave early. It’s nothing unusual if you consider how you work even in like Canada; you know if you are sick or have an emergency, you take a day off. It was very normal,” Abu Ridwan said.

Watch “When terror comes home: The plan for deradicalizing returning ISIS fighters” on The Fifth Estate on CBC-TV on Sunday at 9 p.m.

Yet life was anything but normal for the civilians who lived in Raqqa. The underground citizen journalist group — Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently — documented 29 public civilian executions in Raqqa in November and December 2014.

Abu Ridwan said his monthly ISIS salary of slightly less than $200 US was enough to live a comfortable life.

full story at https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canadian-isis-fighters-return-home-1.5297142