Islamic State nurse wants to return to Australia

An Islamic State recruit says he won’t stab anyone if he is allowed to return to Australia. And he revealed what life is like under IS.

An Australian who travelled to Syria to join Islamic State is begging to return, saying he has seen “rivers of blood flow”.

Mahir Absar Alam was last month reportedly captured by US-backed coalition forces in the battle for the last Islamic State enclave of Baghouz in Syria.

The 26-year-old who had been living in Melbourne before he travelled to Syria in July 2014 is now desperate to come back to Australia.

Alam was born in Sydney but completed high school in the small South Australian country town of Loxton. He was studying accounting at Swinburne University before joining IS.

He told the ABC he was not an IS fighter but instead worked as a nurse at IS hospital, sometimes with Australian doctor Tareq Kamleh.

During his time in Syria he saw many atrocities and brutality.

“I’ve seen rivers of blood flow, I’ve seen … innocent women and children killed for nothing but going shopping, nothing but sitting at home trying to feed their family,” he said.

“I’m willing to do literally anything to come back to Oz right now. I’ve been willing to come back for a long time but it’s just been very difficult to come back.”

He said he would not be a danger to Australians.

“People need to understand that we didn’t rape, we didn’t kill, I didn’t set anyone on fire.

“We’re not that majority that’s going to come stab someone with a knife; we’re not going to do anything horrible like that.”

Alam also revealed he had been disciplined by the morality police, known as the hisbah, for downloading movies and TV shows including Game of Thrones.

“On a Friday I’d go watch a movie with my wife at home, chuck a movie on. I used to watch Game of Thrones back in Raqqa [but] I did get in trouble, I got in big trouble,” he said.

“They put me on a charge for distributing movies, so that was horrible, they destroyed my hard drive full of my precious movies.”

Mahir Absar Alam wants to return home to Australia after travelling to Syria to join Islamic State.

Alam, who became known as Abu Salim al-Australi, warned others not to follow in his footsteps and said that the IS propaganda was wrong.

“They’ve never done anything decent for anyone, apart for themselves, apart for each other,” he said.

He said he was willing to face punishment for his actions.

“We just want to go back home, even stay with our parents, I don’t even want to go outside the house.

“Even if they take me to Antarctica to live there, I just want to be as far away from here as possible.”

The news comes as a Sydney tradie detained in the same region also begs Australia for a second chance.

Mohammed Noor Masri, 26, said he joined IS without realising how brutal the terror group was.

In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald on the weekend, Mr Masri said he made a “mistake” and that he is “remorseful” and “regretful”.

A Sydney tradesman who went to Syria to join ISIS has told @davidwroe he will accept whatever punishment he may get if his family is allowed to return to Australia. #9Today pic.twitter.com/QbORG14CwC

— The Today Show (@TheTodayShow) March 31, 2019

There have also been calls to bring the three remaining children of notorious terrorist Khaled Sharrouf and his wife Tara Nettleton back to Australia from a Syrian refugee camp; something that Prime Minister Scott Morrison is resisting.

“I’m not going to put one Australian life at risk to try and extract people from these dangerous situations,” he told reporters this week.

The family made international headlines in 2014 when Sharrouf published shocking pictures of one of his children holding a severed head. His wife died in 2015 and Sharrouf and two of his sons died in an air strike in 2017.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has previously made clear the government would prefer jihadis are dealt with far from Australian shores.