Face of Nation : A Sydney man who fled the country to join Islamic State and presumed dead for almost two years has been found alive in a prison in Syria. Hamza Elbaf, one of four brothers who went to Syria in late 2014 to join the terror group, was believed to have been killed as Western-backed forces conquered the IS caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
27-year-old surrendered in the group’s last holdout, the village of Baghouz, in March, and is now a prisoner of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. He told a Kurdish media agency he could not go back to Australia, and his parents were devastated by his departure.
“After three months I got hold of a mobile phone and I talked to my parents,” he said. “They asked me, ‘Why did you do this?’ They were very upset. They told me to come home. “At this time the new immigrants were being watched, so to leave after a short time, we would have been suspected of being spies.”
He denied fighting for the group, claiming he “wasn’t qualified” and was sent to work as a cook instead. He also denied seeing any mass killings, saying he only saw people being caned for “things like adultery and drinking alcohol”.
Mr Elbaf said he had heard that IS members were buying and selling women as sex slaves and servants but denied involvement. “Only high-ranking people and princes in the Islamic State had access,” he said.
In November 2014, Mr Elbaf and his brothers Omar, Taha and Bilal, aged between 17 and 28, told their parents they had won an all-expenses-paid trip to Thailand.
Just days before the boys left Australia, Omar paid $13,000 for a honeymoon and put deposits on furniture for a new home he was planning to share with his then-partner. But shortly after their departure, their sister received a text message from the boys on Tango saying they had arrived in Syria.
