Melbourne accounting student who joined ISIS begs to come home

Mahir Absar Alam has been in solitary confinement in a Syrian prison for three years.

Mahir Absar Alam, who ran away from Melbourne to join ISIS in Syria. Picture: AAP

Mahir Absar Alam has been in solitary confinement in a Syrian prison for three years.

A Melbourne accounting student who left Australia to join ISIS is begging to return home after being thrown in a Syrian prison. 

Mahir Absar Alam has been held incommunicado - without any contact - in a Syrian jail for three years. He was just one of a dozen ISIS members imprisoned without charge after the fall of the militant group in March 2019.

Now, aged 29, he has spoken to The Australian, calling on his parents’ forgiveness and pleading with the government to allow him to return home.

“I don’t have any problem with the Australian government or my country. I love Australia and I didn’t do anything wrong in Australia. I want to come back,’’ he said.

Asked whether he was or had been an Islamic State member, he replied: “I cannot answer this question for intelligence reasons and legal reasons.’’

Asked whether he supported Islamic State ideology, he said: “It’s better I don’t answer this question either for legal reasons because we don’t know what will happen in the future.’’

Mahir Absar Alam.

Alam left Australia with three other men in 2014, who made their way to Syria to join the caliphate via Thailand, Abu Dhabi, Cyprus and Turkey, before the other three men were killed.

The caliphate is an institution governing a territory under Islamic rule.

Born in Sydney to Bangladeshi parents, Alam, who has a brother, was raised in the South Australian country town of Loxton before moving to Melbourne, where he studied accounting at Swinburne University.

He addressed his family directly: “I hope they can forgive me. I miss them so much. And I hope one day we will meet again.’’

Alam conducted his interview in fluent Arabic as ordered by his guards. One of the first questions he asked The Australian was who had won Game of Thrones, which concluded in 2019.

He confirmed he had travelled from Melbourne in July 2014, and was motivated to leave Australia after watching a story about Syria on A Current Affair.

“They were showing a program on the situation in Syria and how people were suffering. I was watching the show and they were calling for people to come to help the Islamic country," he said.

“I wanted to come to help because I didn’t have anything to do in Australia.’’

The then-22-year-old denied he and his friends had received help as they made the journey from Thailand to Abu Dhabi to Cyprus, then caught a boat to Turkey, entering Syria from the teeming Turkish city of Gaziantep, close to the border.

“We didn’t ask for help, we came by ourselves, we even came to Turkey without knowing how to get to Syria, and we asked ­people there.’’

He said he travelled to Raqqa, the IS caliphate’s Syrian capital, and worked at the National Hospital. Notorious Islamic State propagandist, paediatric doctor Tareq Kamleh, was at the same hospital, he confirmed, and other Australians came through for treatment.

“I was working as a nurse in the surgical ward,’’ he said, adding that Kamleh was “working with ­babies’’ and he didn’t see him much. “I was working 24 hours, I was so busy, but a few Australians were there. Whenever they came to the hospital, I saw them but otherwise I didn’t.’’

He married a Syrian woman and had two sons, and while he believed they were alive, he’d had no contact with them for more than three years.

Alam believes the last contact he had with anyone from outside was in 2019 when officials from Australia’s domestic spy agency, ASIO, came to see him.

“They just asked me if I am an Australian, without any ­details at all. Normal information, like what was your work like inside ­Islamic State,’’ he said. The visit may have occurred in August of that year.

He said neither Kurdish nor Australian officials had ever told him whether he would be charged, and he remained detained indefinitely without charge.

Asked if he wanted to go back to Australia and face the courts there, he replied: “Yes, for sure. I accept it (court and possible jail time), I don’t have a problem with that.’’

Asked if he posed a threat to Australia, Alam replied. “No.’’