ISIS prisoners in Syria

Brut America

Thousands of suspected jihadists have been detained by Kurdish forces in Syria since the fall of ISIS. Brut. gained rare access into the prisons where ISIS fighters are held — this is what they told us.

Transcript

00:00Trump fights fire with fire.

00:03Islamic State, they made it very clear, they fire eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.

00:07What do you think of the terrorist attacks that happened in Europe?

00:11Bullshit question.

00:12Do you feel sorry for the French, for the Germans?

00:17You think you don't kill so many people and you think the Islamic State is just going

00:21to give you, when they see you, they're just going to give you a box of chocolate?

00:25Jihadists who regret nothing.

00:27We interviewed several of them in Syria in December 2019.

00:30One of our reporters gained exclusive access to a prison run by Kurdish special forces

00:35where some 5,000 alleged members of the Islamic State were being held.

00:44In March 2019, the Islamic State lost the Battle of Baghouz.

00:48This defeat ended their territorial presence in Syria, but it raised a serious question.

00:54What to do with the militants and their family members who were captured in battle?

00:57I was ISIS.

00:58I had the ideology.

00:59I was in the movie thinking I'm going to take over the world.

01:03Of course I regret it.

01:04I get really brainwashed.

01:17The footage and interviews that you are going to see were filmed by Brut's lead foreign

01:21correspondent Charles Vila, a French journalist.

01:24To get inside this heavily guarded and overpopulated prison, Brut had to agree to two conditions.

01:29First, no filming the exterior of the prison for security reasons.

01:33And second, no discussing the news with the prisoners.

01:36To avoid the possibility of a revolt, they still had not been told that the United States

01:40had killed the head of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

02:11Every room was packed, with almost no space to move around.

02:18Barely any daylight either.

02:20The only light that managed to get in was from this window.

02:28Some of the prisoners who had been captured in the Battle of Baghouz in March 2019 hadn't

02:33left this room since then.

02:39The toilets were there, at the back of the room.

02:43Just to the right was where they could wash, which they seemed to do with water cans.

02:49There was a very strong smell coming out of the room.

02:55A reporter said it was almost unbearable.

03:03One of the prisoners in this room was a young British jihadist who agreed to be interviewed.

03:17What do you think of the terrorist attacks that happened in Europe?

03:20And what do you think, when the coalition, they bomb, they just bomb fighters?

03:24When you're constantly bombarding a group of people, don't expect like, you know, no

03:29retaliation.

03:30It's going to happen.

03:31Have you seen the killings of Western journalists that were beheaded on video by British fighters?

03:38As I said, for me, killing or beheading is something gruesome to me.

03:43I don't like it, OK?

03:45But if it's a judgment that's passed by one of the judges of the Islamic State, I might

03:50not like it, but who am I to go and challenge the Islamic State?

03:53I can tell you a lot of stuff, but at the same time, I'm risking my health and my safety

03:59here because I cannot express myself fully.

04:03If I start saying certain things, there's a translator here, he will start telling the

04:07Kurds, he said this, he said that.

04:09Once you're gone, they're going to come and beat the f**k out of me.

04:11I can tell you more, but I don't want to get in trouble.

04:17Our reporter was not alone with the British jihadist.

04:19The head of the prison, along with several members of the Kurdish special forces, were

04:23in the room with him during the entire interview.

04:25Despite that, the man was quick to criticize his captors, as well as the conditions inside

04:30the prison.

04:31I've been sitting in this whole prison for a very long time.

04:35Everybody in this room is desperate to get out of this prison because this prison is

04:39not what they claim to be.

04:44It's very severe.

04:45People are dying here every day, lack of medication.

04:47One guy died here yesterday.

04:49Everybody just wants to get far away from these people because you're not really getting

04:53your basic human rights.

04:55Nobody wants to be a captive like this, the way they're treating the prisoners here.

04:59It's not good.

05:16The head of the prison is a member of the Kurdish special forces and obviously had a

05:20very different take on conditions inside the prison.

05:24The British ISIS member that I interviewed told me that he would get beaten if he was

05:30telling the truth about this prison.

05:54There have been several attempted prison breaks.

06:06In this video, you can see one of the techniques that the prisoners used several times.

06:11One of the jihadists pretends to be dying in order to distract the guards.

06:15When the doors open, the prisoners attack.

06:22As a result, our reporter had to be extremely careful wherever he went, especially when

06:27visiting the prison hospital where some 300 people were crammed together.

06:35This is the hospital.

06:43Our reporter had to let a guard walk ahead of him at all times.

06:49This is as far as he was able to go.

06:53The guards explained that if he went any further, it would be impossible to get out if something

06:57went wrong.

07:19Many of the prisoners were extremely thin and very weak and looked to be suffering from

07:33malnutrition.

07:38Many had bullet wounds, bone pins and external fixations, battle wounds on their arms and

07:44legs, like this man for instance.

07:47A bullet must have hit him in the leg.

07:51There was also a very strong, almost putrid smell and our reporter had to wear a face

07:55mask.

07:58It looked like the people in the hospital had nowhere to wash and there was only one

08:01toilet for the nearly 300 of them.

08:08In the middle of these sick and injured prisoners, our reporter interviewed Abdallah, a 24-year-old

08:13Belgian jihadist who had been there for nine months and had joined the Islamic State originally

08:18in 2014.

08:19Do you have any regret coming to Syria?

08:23I don't regret coming to Syria because I came to help.

08:26Like for example the coalition came to help the Kurds.

08:29Everywhere people want to help me, bad guys, good guys.

08:33Of course in the beginning I was ISIS, I had the ideology.

08:36I was in the movie thinking I'm going to take over the world.

08:39ISIS propaganda is very beautiful, calm and you can live and everything is okay.

08:46And then when you come, if you don't fight, for example, they're going to kill you or

08:50put you in prison.

08:51If you don't do this, you cannot argue with them.

08:53If they have a rule, for example, the attacks in Belgium, if you argue with them, it's not

08:57good or it's bad, you cannot speak.

08:59What do you think of the terrorist attacks that happened in Europe and they were targeting

09:04innocents?

09:05In Beirut I buried four or five babies.

09:07I saw with my own eyes hundreds of women with no legs, with no arms, with no heads

09:12killing innocent people from both sides.

09:15I'm against it, it's bad.

09:17Of course it's very bad what happened to the Belgians in the airport, to the French.

09:22I regret coming to the war and fight and destroy my body, my life.

09:27I left my mother.

09:28Of course I regret.

09:29I was just young, naive.

09:32Being ISIS I was just dumb, believing anything.

09:37This is Al-Hol, a giant camp where the families of Islamic State militants now live.

10:0670,000 people live here, mostly women and children, in extremely difficult conditions.

10:18This is the market for women and children from countries outside Syria, where they can

10:23buy food and clothes.

10:25There's also a store where they can withdraw money that people send them from abroad.

10:56We are surrounded by a piece of fabric, they don't give us food, or they give us diarrhea

11:00for weeks.

11:01There are not many humanitarian associations.

11:02There are no associations at all.

11:03We have no doctors, no hospitals.

11:04What did you do in the Islamic State?

11:05Did you have a job?

11:06I was at home.

11:07Women in the home.

11:08Taking care of the children, cleaning, eating.

11:09I had a life of a woman in the home.

11:10Frankly, it was good, we lived well.

11:11We had our houses, we had our children.

11:12We lived with our husbands, with our children, there were parks, there were hospitals, there

11:19were schools.

11:20It was normal life, like in France, except that we could live our Islam in peace.

11:25It was only when they started to attack Raqqa that people started to flee, and that's

11:31when we started to live in peace.

11:33We were able to live in peace.

11:37Like many jihadists, these women from France continued to defend their decision to live

11:42under the Islamic State, but they were ready to criticize IS too.

11:46I don't want to be affiliated with them at all.

11:49They don't represent me, I don't represent them.

11:52I don't want to be affiliated with their ideology, because for me, that's not Islam.

11:57I am a Muslim, and I will remain so until my death.

12:00What was not their duty?

12:03What was not their duty?

12:05The suicide bombings, they legislated them, even though it's forbidden.

12:08The conditions of the war, it's not like that.

12:10The beheadings, they made a lot of propaganda about it.

12:13To behead someone, it's not natural.

12:17It's not natural.

12:19Obviously, it does something.

12:21Of course.

12:22When you see that, it's shocking.

12:24Of course, our speech is not very credible, given the situation, thinking that everyone

12:29thinks we have the same ideology.

12:32In fact, in life, we do things that are not good, and things that are good.

12:36And here, we did things that were not very...

12:39The only bad thing we did...

12:41Do you regret coming here?

12:43When I look at my son, no, I don't regret coming here, because it's destiny.

12:47But yes, I regret believing them.

12:49I regret believing them.

12:51I blame them.

12:52I'm not a repentant, I regret what I did.

12:54No, I admit it.

12:55And I'm happy with the path I took, because I learned a lot.

12:58Did you try to leave the Islamic State?

13:00Yes, we tried.

13:01Who didn't try?

13:02The truth is that they didn't try.

13:03Last year, we tried.

13:05Even without that, we tried to leave, because it was no longer possible.

13:07It was no longer possible, it was not a choice.

13:09It was no longer like at the beginning, where they guaranteed our security, where we lived in peace.

13:12It had become...

13:13Even they had become completely unfair in their way of doing things.

13:15With us, they were...

13:17Even they had become our oppressors more than the coalition.

13:22We were finally...

13:24We no longer had allies, so we really didn't want to leave their homes.

13:28But unfortunately, they blocked our way, they prevented us from leaving.

13:30If we tried to leave, they would put us in prison.

13:32I was in prison with them, because we wanted to leave.

13:35Until we found ourselves here.

13:46For now, only a handful of members of the Islamic State

13:49have returned to their home countries in Europe and North America.

13:52What will happen to them when they get there

13:54is sure to pose serious legal and ethical complications.

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