The “Innocent” mercenaries

On the day when an IS flag was again raised publicly in the Dohûk area of Iraq, we sat in the interrogation room of an Asayiş station and talked to two German citizens who were sitting in a prison of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria on charges of IS membership and perpetration. The entire conversation is recorded but we will not publish the original recordings as an interview because the two men try to portray themselves as ignorant and harmless citizens of the so-called Islamic State. Instead, we have decided to give an overall impression, and to give a few key pieces of information mentioned by them available to the public in an article.

In the case of Yunus Emre Sakariya, code name Ebu Dua, it is noticeable that the information given to us differs from his statements in previous interviews and from research results. We will mark this in italics.

Yunus Emre Sakariya is a self-confident, eloquent man in his 30s with a great need to communicate. He speaks Arabic and English in addition to Turkish and German.

Yunus was born in Cologne-Meschenich in 1991. His family comes from Ankara, Turkey. After moving to Cologne-Rondorf, he attended Kettler elementary school and finished secondary school in Cologne-Rotenkirchen at the age of 17. He didn‘t learn a profession. He said that “in 2010, a new wave started in Germany with Pierre Vogel and his videos. Through him, I became educated about my religion.” Osama bin Laden was his role model.

He further radicalized himself into the group ‘Millatu-Ibrahim’ and became a member of the community. 20-30 followers formed a conspiratorial community that continuously consolidated ideologically and engaged in intensive work making publications. Later, the group was banned by the German Ministry of the Interior.

When asked what had sparked his interest in the group, he cites the strong group cohesion, the shared feeling of not being welcome in Germany, and “they talked without filters, they preach what they believe.”. On New Year’s Eve 2011/12, he met the group’s leader and preacher, Abu Mohammed Mehmud, an Egyptian with an Austrian passport, who had already made a big impact on him during a three-day seminar at a mosque in Cologne-Zollstock. Yunus stated that “If you are physically able as a man, you must defend your brothers in faith.”. With this goal, the group gradually left Germany.

Yunus left for Cairo in June 2012 with his brother Ismail Zakerya, who was one year younger, and his then-wife Maryam. There, he first contacted Mohammed Mehmud via phone, who took them to his apartment. The other members came after, both as individuals  and as a group.

Yunus can only remember the first name of his wife at the time, Maryam, from Bonn, with whom he says he ran away. At least he remembers that she was born in 1992 and that her family is from Morocco.

After two months in Cairo, they had already started traveling to Libya, where Maryam died in a car accident. He always wanted to address her death and grief as the reason for his decision to fight in Syria as a member of a jihadist group.

His path led him and his brother back to Turkey, and from there, across the border crossing at Hatay to a military training camp “in the forest near the border.” Joining Jabat Al Nusra was the condition Abu Mohammed Mehmud (see above) set to get them into Syria. Yunus downplays military training as a daily sports course.

The timing is not clear, but the brothers served 10 days in Daesh prison for raping a woman. This was followed by a three-month combat mission in the village of Xan near Aleppo against the YPG.

During this period, part of Al-Nusra integrated into IS under the new leadership of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi.

Through Facebook, Yunus was looking for a wife for himself and his brother. A young woman from Trier (mother Serbian, father Algerian) and her girlfriend arrived in Djerablus, his place of residence at that time. They travelled through Turkey, using just their identity cards to cross the border. That same year, in December 2013, internal clashes broke out there between various jihadist groups (including the FSA – Free Syrian Army). Yunus wanted to leave for Turkey with his pregnant wife. To cross the border, he sought help from the Turkish Interior Ministry through his family. Afterwards, his wife apparently left him and traveled back to Germany via Turkey.

He himself remained in Turkey for three years. “I had a luxurious lifestyle in Antalya with my Ukrainian girlfriend”.

“I always had a sense of business”

We do not get a more detailed description of his cross-border business even when asked. His brother, who remained in Syria, worked as a member of Daesh for technical logistics. One of his tasks was to procure scopes for weapons and drones from and through Turkey with the help of MIT (Turkish intelligence). With the help of his brother, Yunus was to bring anti-aircraft missiles from Georgia to Syria. Turkish intelligence (contact Levent) and Russian intelligence were involved.

In March 2017, Yunus returned to his brother Ismael living in Raqqa, via a small border crossing west of Hatay. “We were doing cross-border business with outdoor equipment, making our money.” When asked which borders are meant, he names the Turkish-Syrian and Iraqi-Syrian borders.

In Raqqa, Yunus was given an “Ezidin woman as a gift,” a young woman from the village of Koço in Şengal. “When I came back to Raqqa, everyone had one or more Ezidian women in his household”. In August 2014, she was captured. She was sold, bought and given away. Who gave her to him? He steadfastly refuses to answer.

During the fighting for the liberation of Raqqa, the brothers retreated to Deir ez Zor. In the village of Hajin, he and the young Ezidian woman were captured by the SDF Syrian Democratic Forces on Nov. 25, 2017, and later separated.

Fatih Asim Akel

Just like Yunus, our second interviewee also tries to cite a personal tragedy as the reason for leaving for Syria.

Fatih Asim Akel was born in Hamburg in 1980. His code name is Abu Le. His family comes from Istanbul.

We do not have any protocols from him. To this day, he refuses to make any statements.

Colloquially, his appearance can be described as the appearance of a heap of misery. He repeatedly mentions his physical weakness and his desire to receive medical treatment in Germany.

“I had five years of stress with my wife. The quarrels didn’t stop. I wanted to go far away and started praying.”

This is when his cousin Mohammed Nadir came to his aid. Mohammed Nadir described life under the so-called Islamic State in the city of Raqqa in Syria to him. “It’s a nice life in a modern city.” The trigger for his “spontaneous” departure was the last quarrel with his wife and he asked his cousin to wait for him in Istanbul. “I’m coming, too. I just left for Syria with my jacket.”

Mohammed was waiting for him in Istanbul at his mother’s (Fatih’s mother) apartment. 10 days later, at the end of June 2015, he crossed the border near Gaziantep in an organized group and entered Djerablus in Syria. His cousin was not with him because he was denounced as an IS member in Turkey by his brother and was detained for 10 days. After that, nothing stood in the way of his brother‘s departure for Syria.

Fatih took a cab and a bus to Raqqa: “I got off in the center. I didn’t know anyone and first went to the mosque to wash myself and pray.” At the mosque, he came into contact with a man who helped him. He rented an apartment. With the cash he had, he bought used motorcycles, repaired them, and resold them. He was a construction mechanic in Germany. When asked what life was like for him in Raqqa under the Islamic State, he replies, “Very normal. I had no contacts, was alone. I went to the gym for bodybuilding, to the mosque and repaired the motorcycles. My cousin lived in Deir ez Zor and only visited me once or twice.”. The cousin was killed later while acting as an IS fighter.  When asked about enslaved Ezidian women, he responds with demonstrative ignorance. “I had no contact with women. They were all veiled. I had no interest in marrying again. Why an Ezidi woman too?“

In early 2017, when the war for Raqqa became threatening for him, he left the city and found support again in a mosque in Abu Hamal. He does not explain how he got to Al Baghuz, where he was then arrested on Feb. 22, 2019.

He says he voluntarily turned himself in because “I thought we would live in tents for two months and then be sent to Germany.”.

He does not consider himself a danger to Germany because, in his opinion, he is guilty only of illegal border crossing to a country with a terrorist regime.

This sentence and the attitude behind it run through both conversations: a personal stroke of fate led them to the Islamic State. They take no responsibility for their decisions and actions. They are innocent travelers who have only sought a good life in their religious environment.

The wall of stories they have created rarely cracks, sometimes contradictions flash. The eyes of our interlocutors show no emotion.

It is hard to imagine that they are innocent, the place and the time of their arrest indicate a strong attachment to IS. The organs of the Self-Government in North-and East Syria do not detain these men without reason. Their needs are met and they are guarded. The governments of the home countries of these IS supporters shy away, they do not want to see or address anything in the same way that the Self-Government does. Let the people in North and East Syria solve this problem and protect us from these people – that is their attitude!

Or do the law enforcement agencies in Germany, for example, not see themselves in a position to competently conduct such proceedings?

Daily reports come from Iraq about the resurgent IS, which is attacking the population in a well-organized fashion. The states of the world must take responsibility and fight against IS together with the forces of  the Autonomous Administration. This means recognizing the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and its work.