Sydney ISIS recruit fears he will die in a Syrian prison
A Sydney man who entered the Islamic State caliphate in Syria with his three brothers has told of his fear of dying in a foreign prison.
A Sydney man who entered the Islamic State caliphate in Syria with his three brothers has told of his fear of dying in a foreign prison.
Hamza Elbaf, the only brother to survive his time under Islamic State, said he was “just getting by’’ after more than 3½ years held without charge in a jail in Hasakah in northeast Syria.
Elbaf, whose parents were visited by then-immigration minister Scott Morrison after he and his brothers snuck off to Syria in 2014, said he had no evidence his siblings had been killed, but that he had never heard from them again after they were separated in the Islamic State stronghold of Deir ez-Zor in about 2015.
“There’s nothing that’s been confirmed. There’s a possibility that they are (dead), there’s no information about them at all,’’ he said of older brothers Omar and Bilal, and younger brother Taha.
Omar was 28, Bilal, 25, Hamza, 23, and Taha just 17 when they travelled to the war zone.
Hamza is now being held in one of 27 jails managed by the coalition-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in and around the city of Hasakah, having been taken there when he surrendered at Islamic State’s final bastion Baghouz in March 2019.
Like the other at least 11 Australian men in the jail, he has never been charged, but has been detained for more than three years where he has lost an enormous amount of weight, and fears contracting tuberculosis, which is rampant through the jails.
Elbaf, now aged about 30, admitted for the first time that he had stood guard for Islamic State, armed with a Kalashnikov rifle, claiming he was forced to do so by Islamic State.
He said he had mostly worked in a kitchen in Deir ez-Zor, ferrying food from the store to the kitchen, and never attended a military camp, took a house or married while in Islamic State territory. He has no children.
The case of the Elbaf brothers shocked authorities when four of six siblings, considered “cleanskins”, snuck off to Syria after telling their parents they had won a trip to Thailand.
Bilal is believed to have become radicalised in the weeks before their departure, and convinced or coerced his siblings into joining him.
“We flew to Istanbul from Thailand. We went to Sanliurfa,” Hamza told The Australian from prison, referring to a large city in Turkey near the Syrian border.
“We were actually going to go on a trip, a holiday around there, then events happened with my brothers and they wanted to cross over (into Syria).”
Asked why he had gone to Syria, Elbaf said: “To be honest, I didn’t want to. But there were some events that happened in Turkey with my oldest brothers, Bilal and Omar. They decided they wanted to cross over to Syria. Me and my youngest brother, we were against it, but we couldn’t leave our older brothers behind. They had our passports and we had no money to go back, so we ended up just following them. They said it was going to be temporary, just to review the situation.’’
The brothers drove the 50-odd kilometres to the Syrian city of Tell Abyad, crossing the border where their Islamic State handlers collected them and took them a safe house.
“We got taken from there. Taken by the ones in charge, ISIS,” he said.
“We moved maybe for a good month from safe house to safe house. They moved us to Deir ez-Zor. I think it was still 2014. It was very strict … when we wanted to leave we couldn’t. They took all of our belongings … we just had to wait it out at that time.”
Elbaf said he never went to the Islamic State capital, Raqqa, and did not undergo military training because he contracted hepatitis A, and was admitted to hospital for more than a month. He said he spent four years under Islamic State in Deir ez-Zor, Mayadin and Medina in the east of the country.
“After I got better they told me you have to join some (sic), at the time they were accusing people of being spies. They were like ‘why did you come all the way from Australia and you don’t want to do these things?’.”
He said the siblings had come to Syria because his two older brothers “wanted to experience sharia law”.
He said his brothers had told him it would only be for a short period, and had control of his passport and visa, until the documents were taken away by their Islamic State handlers, along with their mobile phones and money.
Elbaf managed to get a message to his sister in Australia to say they had gone to Syria.
His parents, Assim and Bassama, were devastated. Mr Morrison visited their home in early 2015, and publicly urged the boys to return. As the years passed the family presumed all four of their sons had been killed. The fact Hamza survived was only confirmed when he was photographed by Kurdish media in the prison in 2019. Assim has since passed away.
Despite being issued with an automatic rifle, Hamza Elbaf denied he had ever fought for Islamic State.
“I was working with food in the kitchen, almost like bringing the food from the store, getting stuff delivered to the kitchen, food and stuff. Simple stuff.
“From time to time they would force me to do some guard duty. It was pretty far from the enemy at the time. They actually forced me to do this; it was compulsory. I felt at the time it was actually pretty safe, so I just went along with it.’’
He said he was given a Kalashnikov for the guard duty.
“The people around me actually showed me how to use it.’’
Elbaf was there until the end, surrendering to the Kurdish SDF soldiers after the bloody final siege at Baghouz.
He said he never supported the ideology of Islamic State, but noted “they did teach some things, normal things that normal people do every day in Australia like praying, fasting, things like this”.
He said it was “actually pretty okay, pretty good to be a Muslim in Australia”. Asked if he felt his religious freedoms in Australia had been hampered, he said, “no, not at all”. “I was actually pretty comfortable living in Australia as a Muslim.’’
Elbaf has previously said he did not want to return to Australia if it meant facing a lengthy jail term, but told The Australian that he would be prepared to face justice on home soil.
“Yeah, it’s better than being here,” he said. “Here, I feel like my health is slipping away, slowly deteriorating. I’d rather be in a safe environment and maybe have a chance to come back into society at the end.
“I wouldn’t pose a threat. I really hope I get another chance to live in Australia. I just want to get back to my life, pick up where I left off. I actually want to study.
“Is it possible that I can be notified if I’m actually going to come back to Australia one day? So I can have some patience or know if I’m ever going to leave this prison.
“I’d say to my family, to my mother and my brother and sister I miss them dearly.”
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