Saudi Ex-fighter exposes IS lies

JEDDAH: 21 September 2014

A Saudi citizen who recently returned from Syria after fighting with the “Islamic” State (IS) terror organization has posted an online video urging fellow youth not to fall victim to the group’s rhetoric.

Fahad Al-Zaidi stressed that he had been brainwashed and deluded into thinking this was a legitimate form of “qital” (fighting) against tyrants after reading many lectures and listening to preachers who claimed that they were protecting Islam from its enemies.

Al-Zaidi, however, would soon learn that the reality vastly differed from false promises of righteousness and paradise.

“There is a huge difference between what is published by the media and what IS members are doing on the ground,” he said. “The interviews I had heard on TV with so-called clerics and imams were a total contradiction to what I experienced in Syria.”

Al-Zaidi said: “I had joined the group to fight the Assad regime for its brutality against the Syrian people.”

“Yet I realized what the group was about when they ordered us to fight the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and other groups and leave the Assad regime for later.

“What was even more shocking was the fact that they wouldn’t fire so much as a bullet at Assad loyalists even when they would be a couple of hundred meters away from their tanks. They would, instead, use heavy artillery against the FSA,” he said.

“I had, in fact, discovered that the IS had a hidden agenda within merely a few months of joining the group,” he said.

“Their agenda had become clear to many of us when leaders began accusing other groups, such as the Al-Nusrah Front, of blasphemy.

“Anyone who dared to question the IS would be put in isolation and prevented from contacting others. In some cases, these skeptics would be accused of espionage and executed,” he said.

“Their hatred of other fighter groups filled them with vengeance, which they hoped to instill in us,” said Al-Zaidi.

“They brand anyone who is not with them as infidels. We spent days and nights wondering how we allowed ourselves to be fooled by a bunch of conmen,” he added.