The Syria question: Roll call of the terror-linked prisoners

Australian men are among ISIS-linked prisoners in Syria.

Ahmad Assaad. Picture: AAP

Jamil Ahmed Shqeir: He left Australia for Syria in 2013 after being motivated by “charity feasts’’ at a local religious community in Melbourne, North Press Agency says. He is believed to have married an Australian woman thought to be detained in al-Hol camp near Hasakah. The agency said he trained foreign fighters for Islamic State.

 

Hamza Elbaf: A former Sydney man and one of four brothers who travelled to Syria in late 2014. Omar, Bilal and Taha Elbaf were killed. Hamza was thought to have been killed but turned up in North Press Agency interviews in 2019. His parents made representations to authorities to stop the brothers leaving but were unsuccessful. Hamza Elbaf, aged about 30, has denied fighting for IS, saying he worked as a chef. He has not been accounted for since the attack on the al-Sina’a prison in January.

 

Mahir Absar Alam: Sydney-born, South Australian-raised Alam left for Syria in 2014 with three friends from Melbourne. Mahmoud Abdullatif, Suhan Rahman and Omar al-Helou were killed but Alam, the son of Bangladeshi parents, survived. He told The Australian he’d never been a fighter but was a nurse in Raqqa. He was captured at Baghouz.

 

Yusuf Mohammad Yusuf: Formerly of Melbourne; little was known about the former La Trobe University student until he appeared in a North Press Agency interview in 2019. Also known as Affan al-Somalia, Yusuf, who has Somalian heritage, said he went to Syria in late 2014 after being influenced by a friend he named as Sharmaki Jamea, or Abu Touba al-Australia. He told North Press Agency he travelled to Raqqa where he married and had military training in Homs. He posted social media images of a Jordanian pilot burned to death in a cage.

 

 

Mohammad Noor Masri: Now about 29, he is a former tradesman from Sydney who went to Syria in early 2015. He later married Sydney schoolgirl Shayma Assaad, who was 15 and gave birth to their first child when she was 16, before fathering three more children with her. Masri, who surrendered at Baghouz in March 2019, told Australian media he had been “misled’’ and had never hurt or killed anyone on behalf of IS. He accepted he would serve a significant jail term if returned to Australia and urged the government to accept Ms Assaad and their four children.

 

Ahmad Assaad: The father and grandfather of several women and children in al-Roj camp, Assaad, of Sydney, took his family, including three young daughters, to Syria in 2015 in what he said was an attempt to rescue two sons in the caliphate working to “help Syrian people’’. The family lived in Raqqa and the sons were killed in airstrikes. Also known as Abu Bilal Assaad and Ahmad Mahmoud Assaad, he is a former employee of Crown Security and has said his decision to travel to Syria was “a big mistake’’.

 

Majeed Raad: Raad, whose name is also spelled Majid Raad and Majed Raad, was tried but acquitted over Australia’s largest terror plot, masterminded by Abdul Nacer Benbrika in 2004. Originally from Melbourne, he went to Syria to join IS in 2013 and was presumed dead until he emerged in the Syrian Democratic Force’s prison system in 2019 after being captured near Baghouz.

 

Mohamad Ahmed: Formerly of Melbourne, he travelled to Turkey in 2012 and regularly crossed the border into Syria while working with a charity called Global Humanitarian Aid Australia. While he always denied supporting IS, the AFP had concerns on the charity and its accounts were shut down. Ahmed’s son Omar was an IS member, and his daughter Zahra became the second wife of the IS recruiter Mohammed Zahab, from Sydney. His wife, Kawsar Abbas, and several grandchildren are in al-Roj camp.

 

Nabil Kadmiry: Formerly of Melbourne, he married much younger woman Kirstie Rosse-Emile and took her to Syria after leaving for a family holiday in Morocco. Known to be an IS fighter and in his mid-40s, he is a dual Australian-Moroccan citizen and one of 22 people to have their Australian citizenship stripped. Ms Rosse-Emile and several of her children are detained in al-Roj.

 

Deniz Hasan: Now aged about 27, a former private schoolboy from Melbourne who went to Syria in 2014. He was detained in March 2019 following the fall of Baghuz but his existence was unknown to the public until The Australian discovered him, unwell and emaciated, in August 2022, in a prison at Hasakah. The son of Turkish Cypriot parents, he admitted being an Islamic State fighter who stood watch near Damascus, and undergoing military training near Raqqa. He is married to Danish-Iranian woman Sara ­Nobakhti-Afshar, who is detained in al-Roj camp with their two children, aged about five years and three years. The children are Australian citizens. A third child, a son, was tragically shot dead at Baghuz. He is an associate of some members of the so-called tinnie terrorists', a group of men jailed, and now released, after a bumbling attempt to take a boat from Melbourne to The Philippines in 2016.