An American who describes himself as a journalist, but suspected of having links with the jihadist movement, was captured by relatives of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda in northwestern Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Man (OSDH).
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Bilal Abdul Kareem, a 49-year-old American convert to Islam, is "detained (...) by the Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) group in the village of Atmeh" , not far from the Turkish border, announced Thursday the NGO headquartered in London. His kidnapping could be linked to that of Tauqir Sharif, a man who presented himself as an aid worker but was stripped of his British nationality, before being kidnapped by HTS. Abdul Kareem published an interview with his wife Racquell Hayden Best, who accused HTS of arbitrary detention and torture.
Interviews with radicalized fighters
According to the OSDH, the publication of this prosecution video interview precipitated the arrest of Abdul Kareem, whose real name is Darrell Lamont Phelps. Converted to Islam, the latter joined the Middle East in 2002 and entered Syria in 2012. He notably worked with renowned media such as CNN, before founding his own channel on social networks. If he made himself known through his interviews with radicalized fighters and members of Al-Qaeda, these interviews also fueled suspicions of proximity to Syrian jihadist networks.