Two British and one Irish citizen, who fought with Kurdish units against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, but were imprisoned in Iraqi Kurdistan while they were trying to return to Europe, have been freed. The three men are Joshua Molloy, from County Laois in the Republic of Ireland, Jac Holmes from Bournemouth, England, and Joe Ackerman (pictured), from the West Yorkshire city of Halifax in England’s northern region. All three joined Kurdish militias and saw action in Syria and Iraq in recent months.
Holmes, a former information technology
manager, had no military experience when, in early 2015, aged 22, he
entered Syria, aiming to join Kurdish forces. He soon enlisted in the
Kurdish People’s Protection Unit (YPG), a Kurdish group that serves as
the armed wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Syria.
The Englishman from Bournemouth participated in several battles, but
returned to the United Kingdom in June 2015, in order to recover from a
bullet wound to the shoulder, which he suffered while in the
battlefield. As soon as he was cured, he returned to Syria and rejoined
the YPG. His compatriot, Joe Ackerman, is a former member of the British
armed forces who traveled to Kurdistan last year and joined the YPG
after entering Syria illegally. He too was eventually injured when his
patrol was struck by a roadside bomb. The third man, Irishman Joshua
Molloy, is also a former soldier, having served in the British Royal
Irish Regiment, an infantry regiment of the British Army.
Many Western governments, including the
British and Irish governments, maintain that their citizens who fight in
the Syrian civil war may be prosecuted under counterterrorism
legislation, even if they have fought against the Islamic State. But
that has not stopped hundreds of Westerners from traveling to Syria and
Iraq to join mostly Kurdish, Assyrian and other forces. Last December, intelNews reported on a study
that identified over 108 American citizens who had enlisted in the
various militias and armed groups fighting against the Islamic State.
Nearly half of them had joined the YPG in Syria, while others had
enlisted in the peshmerga forces of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
(PUK) in Iraq, as well as in an assortment of Christian militias,
including the Nineveh Plains Protection Units and the Dwekh Nawsha.
According to reports,
Holmes, Ackerman and Molloy were on their way back to Europe and trying
to cross from Syria into northern Iraq, when they were captured by
Iraqi Kurdish government forces. They were jailed for over a week in the
Kurdish city of Irbil while their captors tried to verify that they
were not Islamic State volunteers. They were released on Sunday. In a
statement issued last weekend, the British Foreign Office said it was
helping its two citizens return to England as soon as possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment