'Better prison in Germany than freedom in Syria'

"The world…should know the truth," Ebrahim B. of Wolfsburg, in the German state of Lower Saxony, told the media on Thursday evening. In a joint interview with the national broadcasters NDR and WDR and the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" newspaper, the former member of the "Islamic State" (IS) terror organization spoke out against the group for the first time publicly.

Ebrahim, the son of Tunisian immigrants who came to Germany to work for Volkswagen in the 1970s, left Germany after a mostly secular youth in May of 2014 with his friend Ayoub B. looking to IS' promise of "adventure and heroics," as NDR put it. He returned after only few months, and was arrested as a terrorist fighter in November of last year. Ayoub was detained by German authorities a few months later.

In the first-ever public interview with a German ex-member of IS, Ebrahim described traveling to Turkey with Ayoub, before they were brought over the border by an IS middleman. At the border they were told that the Turkish soldiers there were complicit: they would shoot, "but just in the air."

Once in Syria, they were brought to a house for foreign fighters and locked in. They took "our passports, our cell phones..even my toothbrush, toothpaste, and shampoo."

Ebrahim went on to explain many of the other strange rules of life as an "Islamic State" member: "We could only shower once a week," he told the media, and said the IS commanders explained that the Islamic prophet Muhammad bathed this way.

Promises of adventure, cars, and women

IS would convince you to stay with promises of luxury and women, Ebrahim said. "In Syria, you can drive the most expensive cars, ones you could never afford in Europe," he told the press. He explained how would remind people how expensive it was to get married and start a family in Europe, saying "here you can marry…marry four women even, per Islamic law."

But IS "has nothing to do with Islam," Ebrahim said. He described how one man, thought to have been a spy, was killed by commanders and then "they brought his corpse to us in our room, and put his head on top of his body, to scare us" into complying. Life was simply "terrible," he said.

According to state prosecutors, Ayoub elected to train as a fighter in Syria, while Ebrahim was brought to Iraq to become a suicide bomber. There are photographs of him and other future suicide bombers from Germany having a barbecue at a villa in the Iraqi city of Fallujah. At least 20 young men from Wolfsburg are thought to have traveled to Iraq and Syria since 2013.

Ebrahim said he preferred prison in Germany to "freedom in Syria."

His trial in the city of Celle is set to begin in August. Ebrahim and Ayoub are only two of some 700 Germans suspected to have traveled or still be abroad in Syria fighting for Islamist extremists.

es/msh (AFP)