Mad Dogs

Reporting the news inside parts of Syria and Iraq controlled by the Islamic State (IS) is a dangerous affair since anyone who fails to support the group's racist and fascist views tends to be murdered in cold blood.

But here's a report from The Times which has the ring of truth about it, portraying IS as a series of violent gangs organised along national and racial lines, with the Saudis and Iraqis ruling the roost while others with less status do their bidding.

In times gone by some commentators in the UK press were dumb enough to compare the 'mad dogs' of IS with the volunteers from the International Brigades who went to fight against fascism during the Spanish Civil War.

Unsurprisingly, you don't hear much from these same people nowadays. 

Death row prisoner tells of escape from Isis jail

'Omar' was held in the same jail as the journalist Kenji Goto - Reuters

By Hannah Lucinda Smith - The Times

Scores of disillusioned foreign jihadists have been imprisoned by Islamic State militants to prevent them fleeing the network’s self-declared caliphate, which is riven with infighting and bitter national rivalries.

Speaking to The Times, a former captive who escaped imminent execution in a notorious Isis jail, revealed that many European jihadists who ripped up their passports on declaring their allegiance to what they believed would be an idealistic Islamic State soon became demoralised by increasing divisions among the group and wanted to leave. He explained that Saudis and Iraqis were the kingpins in the group.

“The Tunisians think of themselves as the fighters, and the Saudis as the religious men, the clerics,” said Omar, a Syrian civil activist who spent six months on death row inside the terror group’s huge prison compound in Al Bab, in the northern province of Aleppo, Syria, before his escape three months ago.

“Each nationality tends to stick together. The British are usually the professionals — the doctors and the engineers.”

Omar, who declined to give his real name for fear of reprisals, was held along with a number of foreign fighters — including one 20-year-old French jihadist — who had been caught trying to leave the group. His comments provide a unique insight into the workings and structure of the terror organisation, its strict hierarchy and conditions within its jails.

“They [the foreign fighters] come expecting a heaven and when they see the reality they are shocked,” Omar said, speaking in southern Turkey near the Syrian border. “There is a hierarchy in Isis and the foreign fighters and the Syrians are at the bottom of it.”

He said many foreign jihadists with little or no fighting experience were being sent to the front lines against their will as the terror group came under increasing pressure to hold on to territory in Iraq. Those who refuse to fight are killed, and anyone trying to leave Isis territory must clear numerous checkpoints.

Al Bab, 20 miles northeast of the city of Aleppo, is one of Isis’s main strongholds in Syria. A number of British men and women have moved to the city in the past year, with some posting Twitter messages about the home comforts — such as Nutella and pizza — that are available there.

Yet with often only a limited knowledge of Arabic, European fighters often find themselves isolated and called on to prove their loyalty to the group. That, said Omar, is partly why they have become notorious for their brutality.

“There are two ways to prove your allegiance to Isis: either by getting married or by carrying out the punishments,” he said. “They were merciless — the foreign fighters and the Syrians treated us the worst because they are the lowest in Isis.” Sentenced to death for his opposition to Isis and support for moderate revolutionary forces, Omar was held with civilians who had been imprisoned for minor crimes such as smoking, fighters from rival rebel groups and, for a short time, Kenji Goto, the Japanese journalist. Goto was later transferred to the foreign hostages’ prison in Raqqa before being beheaded on film by Isis.

Omar said that he saw and heard of many cases of prisoners being forced to confess to fabricated crimes under extreme torture and of inmates being put to death without trial and later pardoned. In one such incident, a Syrian man was forced to dig a grave for his brother, who had been accused of homosexuality. Days after he was killed, his family received a pardon.

Now living in hiding in a Turkish town near the border with Syria, Omar said that he still suffers from flashbacks and nightmares, and fears being captured again.

The prison complex, in a former French colonial building, housed three separate units for civilian prisoners, prisoners of war and people accused of sedition and blasphemy. Omar was initially held in the prisoners-of-war section, before being moved in with those accused of blasphemy.

He was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment but his punishment was later increased to a death sentence. He waited out his time in a cramped jail cell, where he was given just one meal a day. He was also regularly placed in solitary confinement.

After enduring prolonged beatings and torture sessions in which he was hung from the ceiling by his arms, and having watched his closest friend being led away to his death, Omar managed to escape by audaciously slipping out of the main prison gates by mingling into a crowd of people who had come to pay their condemned relatives a final visit.

“The day before, they had executed a fighter from [the al-Qaeda affiliated group] Jabhat al-Nusra,” he said. “I knew then that they were definitely going to execute me too and that I had to get out.”

Less than a month later the prison was hit by a huge coalition airstrike that destroyed the entire complex and killed scores of prisoners. Omar lost friends he had been jailed with, but days later he received news that made him smile.

“There was one prison guard who was a bastard, he gave the worst beatings,” he says. “I heard he was killed in that bombing too. That was the only good thing.”

The UK has admitted that at least 500 Britons have travelled to Syria and Iraq to join Isis, although it is believed that the number could be as high as 2,000. Ten days ago, a family of nine British citizens from Rochdale were caught by the Turkish security forces as they tried to cross into Syria.

While it has been relatively easy for thousands of foreign fighters to enter the country, sources said that leaving again is almost impossible. Isis has thrown up dozens of new roadblocks around the Syrian towns of Tel Abyad and Jarablus, both next to the Turkish border, over the past few months. Anyone suspected of planning to leave the area and cross the border into Turkey is imprisoned.