Mahir Absar Alam: Islamic State nurse pleads to return to Australia

South Australian-raised Islamic State jihadist Mahir Absar Alam promises he “won’t stab anyone” if he is allowed to return to Australia.

An Australian jihadist captured by Kurdish forces after the collapse of Islamic State’s last stronghold in Syria has begged to be allowed to come home.

Mahir Absar Alam, a 26-year-old former accounting student, has been detained with his wife and two children near the Syrian village of Baghouz.

“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,” Alam told the ABC.

He added: “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.”

Mahir Absar Alam says he was inspired to join Islamic State after seeing Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi delivering a sermon at a captured mosque in the Iraqi city of Mosul. Picture: AP

‘RIVERS OF BLOOD’

Born in Sydney and raised in the regional South Australian town of Loxton, Alam has described seeing ‘rivers of blood’ in his role as a nurse and experiencing unending misery under the self-proclaimed Caliphate.

“You try to run but you just can’t … you look left and right and you don’t see nothing but death,” he said.

“You look forward, you die; you look backwards, you die; you look left and right, you die. You’re stuck.”

Australian Islamic State recruit promises he won't "stab someone" if allowed to come home.https://t.co/8haahraNDW pic.twitter.com/er1EUl2PaO

— News Breakfast (@BreakfastNews) April 3, 2019

Alam says he took no part in the Caliphate’s atrocities, and had been imprisoned when attempting to free the Caliphate.

“They asked me to fight, yeah. They normally force people to fight but I really pushed it — I couldn’t fight,” he said.

A tweet showing Tareq Kamleh, the former Adelaide doctor who joined IS. Picture: Twitter

AUSTRALIAN FIGHTERS

Alam said he had seen ‘a few other’ Australians in his work as a nurse at Islamic State hospitals, where he would sometimes work alongside Australian doctor Tareq Kamleh.

“I’ve seen Abu Zarqawi, which is Khaled Sharrouf, you see him and his kids in the hospital. You see a few other Aussies that come in … they have kids and they need treatment,” he said.

Alam warned fellow Muslims to ignore Islamic State propaganda.

“It all started the day Abu Bakr al Baghdadi came on television and he was giving that speech in that [mosque] in Mosul and then we unfortunately took his call and came to here,” he said.

Khaled Sharrouf and boys believed to be his stand in front of the Islamic State flag in an image posted on Twitter. Source: Supplied