Birmingham pharmacist held in Syria over suspected ISIS links
A man who says he is a pharmacist from Birmingham has been detained in Syria on suspicion of being a member of Islamic State.
A video of the blindfolded man being questioned by members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US-backed Kurdish militia, was posted on the Twitter account of International Volunteers Report on Saturday. The group said he had been captured in the city of Deir ez-Zor a month ago.
Speaking with a Birmingham accent, the man tells his captors his name is Anwar Miah and he is a qualified pharmacist from Birmingham. He says he has been in Syria for just under four years.
Asked if he is a member of Isis, he says: “I came here to work with the general people and to help people and work in general hospitals. I’ve been working in hospitals since I came here.
“The areas that I worked in were controlled by Daesh [Isis], but I have worked with the general people. I worked in the general hospitals. They were controlled by Daesh but I can’t do anything about that. All my work was with the public.”
A report from 2014, the year Miah is thought to have travelled to Syria, shows that a pharmacist of the same name and a colleague were struck off the pharmacists’ register for inventing false employees to conceal low staffing levels at their pharmacy in Birmingham.
Responding to the video on Twitter, Shiraz Maher, director at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) at King’s College London, said: “This underscores, once again, how Islamic State fighters, and many foreigners with them, remain operational despite the group’s loss of territory.
“He gives his name as Anwar Miah and says he’s a doctor/pharmacist from Birmingham. He has been in Syria for four years, meaning he travelled in 2014 when Islamic State was at the peak of its powers.
“One of the big questions and dilemmas for security agencies, after Islamic State lost Raqqa and Mosul, is: who died? Who survived? How many got away and where are they now?”
At least three other British men are currently in Kurdish and US custody in Syria, accused of being members of Isis.
Londoners El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey were captured in January. They are thought to have been part of an Isis terror cell known as “the Beatles”, which was behind a series of high-profile killings of US and UK citizens in Isis-held territory, including the British aid workers Alan Henning and David Haines and the American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff.
A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “The UK advises against all travel to Syria. As all UK consular services are suspended in Syria, it is extremely difficult to confirm the whereabouts and status of British nationals there.
“Anyone who has travelled to these areas against UK government advice, for whatever reason, is not only putting themselves in considerable danger but also under suspicion.”
Source: Guardian
