5000 infected ISIS militants in Syrian jails want to be sent home

Daily Mail

Behind the steel door, the cell is as packed as their eyes are empty – haggard, scrawny prisoners in orange jumpsuits lying head-to-toe cover every inch of floor space.

An AFP team was given rare access to one of the crowded detention facilities in northeastern Syria where Kurdish forces are holding Islamic State group (IS) suspects.

As a Turkish offensive launched against Kurdish forces earlier this month wreaks chaos in the area, just how solid such doors will be is a question keeping the world on edge.

The men crammed into poorly fortified jails such as this one in Hasakeh hail from dozens of countries that don’t want them free – but don’t want them back either.

With 5,000 inmates – Syrian, Iraqi, but also British, French, German – the prison is bursting with the flotsam of the international jihadist army IS raised five years ago.

The group is accused of carrying out widespread atrocities in territory it once controlled across Iraq and Syria, including mass executions, rape, enslavement and torture, much of it filmed for propaganda.

‘I want to leave the prison and go back home to my family,’ says Aseel Mathan, 22.

The lank young man left his native Wales when he was still 17, to join his brother in Mosul, the northern Iraqi city where the IS ‘caliphate’ was born.

When his brother was killed, he moved across the Syrian border to Raqa, the other main hub of the now-defunct jihadist proto-state.

See the pics, videos, and read the rest here: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7626779/5-000-ISIS-militants-plead-sent-home-countries-rot-Syrian-prison-hellhole.html