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Confessions of Aziz S from Rozaje, ISIL returnee: Criminals don’t spare anyone

Aziz was actually born in Bijelo Polje, because his pregnant mother was at the time visiting her family there, nut he return to his hometown of Rozaje several weeks later.

He lived there until his family decided to move. Not because they were poor and had to, but because they wanted a better life altogether. Mother wanted to move to Stuttgart, but father advocated for Sarajevo. Mother won, proving her choice wiser as war broke out in Bosnia. Ten of father’s family members died in Sarajevo over the course of three years. One of his aunts lost a nine-year old daughter, and another killed herself a decade after the war, because of the family she had lost. Two years after, his own mother committed suicide as well.

fury

He was twenty-something when he started feeling rage because of everything that had befallen his family. He wanted to fight, although he wasn’t sure against whom, or even why. He trained karate and jiu-jitsy since 1991, and became obsessed with martial arts. When his mother died, he took up kick boxing, ultimate fighting and Thai box. His life became the training camp he opened in 2006 near Stuttgart.

Everything changed three years later, when during his stay in Vienna he accidentally met 52-year old Jusuf Selimovic, also attending the competition of juniors from licensed kickboxing camps. Selimovic, a native of Zivinica and citizen of Austria, was already recognized as one of the most radical Salafists.

It seemed to him that he had met a savior. Every encounter with him and long conversations about Allah, the Prophet, the Koran and Islam in general, made him feel like he finally has a purpose.

By mid-2011, they were talking about the Caliphate and ISIL.. Aziz says he did not understand much, but nevertheless listened without questioning a thing. Finally in 2012, Selimovic asked him to “assist him in Allah’s path” by going to a Fallujah training camp for young jihadists.

“I separted from Vienna, via Turkey, in March 2013. I trained hundreds of boys 10 to 16 years old, for two years. I have fulfilled my two-year oath to the end, and went to never return again”, said Aziz S.

criminals

Although he was far from the battlefield, he would occasionally hear about the crimes of jihadist hordes; rape of women, young girls and even very small girls; shootouts between “coreligionists” for the distribution of the spoils; crude executions of individuals and of whole groups of fighters who at least tried to fight these criminals. He was particularly appalled by the attitude toward the sick and seriously wounded soldiers and civilians in particular.

“It’s all light years away from the teaching of Allah, from Muhammad’s mission, from the holy book of Koran, from the faith of Islam”, Aziz S underlines.

With a huge risk to his own life and the wellbeing of his family, he intends to publish a book on his two years of severe trials and the deepest disappointments in the alleged Caliphate. The book should be out by the end of the year.

“A friend” from Bijelo Polje

“I remember meeting Ekan K from Bijelo Polje at the entrance to the camp near Fallujah on March 19 2013, at first happy for having a compatriot”, recalls Aziz S.

It turned out, however, that he was to be his shadow, to spy on him, supervise his work and behavior and occasionally provoke him by offering the so-called “forbidden fruit” out of the alleged compatriot solidarity.

“Ekan was not stupid. He graduated from a religious school, spoke Arabic well, but was incredibly confident in underestimating my intelligence, daily. He also had a belt in judo, probably brown, which helped me offer him individual training and sparring to “help him substantially improve combat readiness in a relatively short period of time”. I told him this like a fellow countryman”, said Azis S.

He held on for three weeks, and after a judo practice gone wrong, he fell awkwardly and hurt himself.

 

“I guess they drove him to the hospital but he never came back. In the camp, which at the time held between 200 and 250 boys, I never noticed any sad faces for Ekan’s injury. Over time, I learned that many suffered severely because of his spying and supervisory duties”, recalls Aziz S.

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