SerpApi.Org
An Australian man who was thought dead after leaving his home in Perth to join the Islamic State was found alive in a prison in Iraq, according to a Tuesday report by The Australian.
Known online as "Dr. Jihad," Tareq Kamleh was presumed to have been killed in Syria over a decade ago, but was actually being held in a high-security Baghdad prison, according to the report.
His survival of the siege of Raqqa in 2017 was reportedly detailed in court documents, which The Jerusalem Post couldn't verify, while Kamleh is currently undergoing interrogation by the country’s elite counter-terrorism judiciary.
He is one of the 13 Australian men currently held in Iraqi prisons under suspicion of being part of ISIS, with Kamleh also being under investigation in Australia for terrorism offenses, including joining and recruiting for a banned terrorist organization.
Australia's opposition leader, Angus Taylor, called for Kamleh to be barred from entering the country, according to a report on Wednesday by Australia's ABC Network.
From doctor in Australia to field medic for ISIS
Kamleh was born in Perth in 1985 to a Palestinian father and a German Catholic convert mother. His family described the environment where he was raised as one that "gave little hint of future extremism."
He graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery from the University of Adelaide in 2010. The report said that his peers saw him as "a playboy, charismatic, prone to drinking heavily and pursuing romantic affairs."
He joined ISIS after working for years as a doctor in Australia, with the First Karkh Investigation Court in Baghdad saying that "a series of choices he later made led him to join the ISIS terrorist group, ultimately resulting in his arrest and investigation before the Iraqi judiciary.”
He appeared in several propaganda videos from the Islamic State, one of them shared a week after he left for Syria. The main video shared showed him clad in medical scrubs cradling infants, while he appeared crouched in a subterranean cave wearing a tactical vest and clutching an AK47 in another one.
He traveled to Syria in 2015 to join ISIS and was present in the siege of Raqqa. After surviving that fight, he went to different ISIS-controlled territories, working as a field medic for the terror group. He was later detained in Iraq, where he was identified by his codename “Abu Yusuf al-Australi”, which means “father of Yusuf the Australian”.
