Alleged US IS member 'marooned between Turkish and Greek borders'
An alleged American member of Islamic State has been marooned in the no-man’s land between the Turkish and Greek borders after the Greek authorities refused him entry, according to a Turkish news report.
The Turkish television channel Haber 7 screened video images of a man dressed in dark clothes waving at the camera from the strip of land between the two border posts, The Guardian reported.
Jean-Charles Brisard, the president of the Centre for Analysis of Terrorism in Paris, said in a tweet that the video showed how “a Isis jihadist expelled by Turkey to Greece is literally stuck in the buffer zone separating the two countries after Greece’s refusal to allow entry into the territory”.
A state department spokeswoman said: “We are aware of reports of the detainment of a US citizen by Turkish authorities. Due to privacy considerations we have no further comment.”
It was not clear whether the Turkish detention had come before or after the apparent attempt to expel the suspect via Greece.
The spokeswoman gave no further details but the timing of the statement issued in the early afternoon in Washington suggested that after expulsion to Greece failed the man had been taken into Turkish custody.
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is due to visit Washington on Wednesday when he is expected to discuss the fate of foreign fighters caught in Isis ranks.
On Monday Turkey said it had begun deporting foreign members of Isis held in custody, in a policy that risks diplomatic fallout with its European allies.
One US citizen had already been repatriated and seven German nationals were due to be flown home on 14 November, the interior ministry spokesperson Ismail Catakli said on Monday. Preparations to deport two Irish, 11 French, and three Danish citizens were also under way, he said. The suspects were not immediately identified.
The interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, said last week that Ankara would begin to send Isis militants back to their home countries from Monday even if they had been stripped of their citizenship, saying Turkey was not a “hotel” for foreign jihadis.