Kashmiri terrorist in Syria wants to return

Adil Ahmad, the first Kashmiri to have joined the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has surrendered and is in the custody of US forces in Syria, said his family based in Srinagar on Wednesday.

According to his father, Adil — an MBA graduate — told them in a voice note that the US-led forces in Syria had surrounded them and asked to surrender in March this year. "I want to return back and the US Army has told us that if we surrender, we will be sent back to our countries," said Adil in a 25 March voice note to his father.

Otherwise shy, Adil pursued his MBA from Queensland University in Australia and that's where his family believed he got radicalised and later traveled through Turkey to Syria.

"We have been surrounded by US forces. I am performing Istikhara — special prayer by Muslims when in need of guidance — and we have decided to surrender with the family," he told his father.

According to his family, Adil married a Dutch national and had a 5-year-old son, who died during the battle due to starvation. They said that his wife is in a refugee camp with Shamima Begum, a British-born woman, who left the UK in February 2015 to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in Syria.

"He always told us that he joined for an NGO purportedly working with Syrian refugees. But, we developed a suspicion in 2013," says his father Fayaz Ahmad Wada.

His family is now running from pillar to post to bring him back. "We have written to several agencies and we are hopeful," his mother said.