http://www.thenation.com/article/what-i-discovered-from-interviewing-isis-prisoners/
What I Discovered From Interviewing Imprisoned ISIS Fighters
They’re drawn to the movement for reasons that have little to do with belief in extremist Islam.
No sooner am I settled in an
interviewing room in the police station of Kirkuk, Iraq, than the first
prisoner I am there to see is brought in, flanked by two policemen and
in handcuffs. I awkwardly rise, unsure of the etiquette involved in
interviewing an ISIS fighter who is facing the death penalty. He is
small, much smaller than I, on first appearances just a boy in trouble
with the police, his eyes fixed on the floor, his face a mask. We all
sit on armchairs lined up against facing walls, in a room cloudy with
cigarette smoke and lit by fluorescent strip lighting, a room so small
that my knees almost touch the prisoner’s—but he still doesn’t look up. I
have interviewed plenty of soldiers on the other side of this fight,
mostly from the Kurdish forces (known as pesh merga) but also fighters
in the Iraqi army (known as the Iraqi Security Forces or ISF), both Arab
and Kurdish. ISIS fighters, of course, are far more elusive, unless you
are traveling to the Islamic State itself, but I prefer to keep my head
on my shoulders.
http://www.thenation.com/article/what-i-discovered-from-interviewing-isis-prisoners/
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