American IS 'sniper' charged in New York

WASHINGTON: Tania Joya has devoted her life to "reprogramming" extremists and reintroducing them into society - a process she understands well as a "former Islamic jihadist" herself. "My aim is for them to feel a sense of remorse and to train them so that they can be good citizens once they are released from prison, so they can adjust to society," Joya said during a visit to Washington, to present a project on preventing extremist violence.


Born in 1984 near London to a Muslim Bangladeshi family, Joya grew up confronted by racism and the struggles of integration. She radicalized at age 17, after the September 11 terror attacks in New York and Osama bin Laden's call for a global jihad.


In 2004, she married an American Muslim-convert, Yahya al-Bahrumi (born John Georgelas). She began advocating for an Islamic state, for which her three children would be soldiers. But in 2013, her husband took her and their children against her will to northwestern Syria to join jihadist insurgents. Joya reported her husband to US authorities and, after three weeks, fled Syria to the United States. Joya settled in Texas, her husband's home state. There, she rejected Islam and changed her life, divorced and re-married.


WASHINGTON: Tania Joya, the ex-wife of a senior leader for the Islamic State, speaks during an interview with AFP about her experience and the Preventing Violent Extremism Training, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. — AFP


Re-programming, giving them hope
Yahya, her first husband, joined the Islamic State group, which would soon control large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq. He was in charge of the group's English-language propaganda, and Joya said he became the "highest-ranking American" in the IS group. He died in 2017 during fighting in Mayadin, in northern Syria, as the so-called IS "caliphate" crumbled. However this created a new problem - Western jihadists or their spouses and children wanting to come home.


Joya realized that she had something to offer. "It's really important to de-radicalize them, rehabilitate" these people, she said. "It's reprogramming them and giving them a sense of hope in the political process." It's also important to "get them to understand the psychology and the patterns… what led them to extremism," understanding "the rejection many in the US and Europe faced growing up there, the cultural conflict, the crisis they went through," she said.


"Once it's all explained to them, very logically, they will accept it just as I did." Joya favors repatriating foreign rebels from the Middle East so they can be judged in their countries of origin. While that is the US policy, many European countries such as France are wary of taking in the jihadists. In May and June, 11 French nationals were sentenced to die in Iraq for their affiliation to IS.


Joya has campaigned for the return of Shamima Begum, who joined the jihadist group when she was just 15 but now wants to return home to Britain. However Begum's lack of remorse has turned public opinion against her, and the British government stripped her of her citizenship in February. Kurdish-run camps in northeast Syria have taken in some 12,000 foreign fighters from 40 different countries, including 4,000 women and 8,000 children whose fathers are jihadists.


'Inoculation' against indoctrination
Countries with jihadists stranded in refugee camps "are responsible for these individuals," said Joya. "We can't just push them off to the Middle East, to the Kurdish people… the abuses they're facing in these camps are only confirming their beliefs of radicalization." Joya is participating in the Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) program organized by the Clarion Program, a US non-profit dedicated to educating people "about the growing phenomenon of Islamic extremism," according to its website.
The PVE program provides "communication models" that offer "workshops for youth so that before a child is even indoctrinated or introduced to radical ideologies, they've really been inoculated" against religious and ideological extremism, said national program coordinator Shireen Qudosi. "That goes from gangs, to radical ideologies: antifa, neo-Nazi groups, Islamist extremism," she said.


IS 'sniper' charged
In another development, a naturalized American who was a sniper for the Islamic State group has been charged in New York with material support for a terror group after being captured in Syria and repatriated to the United States, the Justice Department announced Friday. Kazakhstan-born Ruslan Maratovich Asainov fought for the Islamic State in Syria for five years before he was captured by the Syrian Democratic Forces and handed over to US custody, the department said.
Asainov, 43, was brought back to the United States on Thursday and was to be arraigned Friday afternoon in federal court in Brooklyn. He fought for IS in Syria from 2013 to 2018 as a sniper and a weapons trainer for other combatants. Over time, he rose up through the ranks of the organization, and was named an "emir," or chief, in charge of weapons training. He stayed in contact with some people in the United States, sending messages and photographs of himself from the battlefield.


"We are the worst terrorist organization in the world that has ever existed," one of his messages from 2015 said, according to court documents. Asainov also tried to recruit another individual in the United States to join the group, who, he did not know, was an informant for the New York Police Department. "The United States is committed to holding accountable those who have left this country in order to fight for ISIS," Assistant Attorney General John Demers said in a statement.


Few IS fighters repatriated
Asainov appeared to be the first actual Islamic State battlefield combatant brought back to the United States from Syria for trial. Several other US citizens have been repatriated, including women married to IS fighters, a man who taught English to IS followers, a former university student who became an informant for the US government shortly after joining the group, and a man who was captured before he joined in any combat. They are among thousands of foreign fighters and their family members captured last year in the US-led campaign to eradicate the group from its strongholds in Iraq and Syria.


Syria's Kurds now hold around 1,000 foreign men in jail, as well as some 12,000 non-Syrian women and children in overcrowded camps. Washington has pressured allies to take back their own citizens who joined IS and place them on trial at home, but Britain, France and others have so far declined to do so. London has refused to repatriate the two surviving members of the so-called Beatles, an Islamic State kidnap and torture cell made up of four men from Britain. - AFP