Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers in Irbil, northern Iraq, on Wednesday, March 9, 2016.(Photo: Alice Martins, AP)
An Virginia man<span style="color: Red;">*</span>identified by Kurdish forces as<span style="color: Red;">*</span>a member of the Islamic State in Iraq was detained Monday while apparently trying to flee to Turkey, Kurdish military<span style="color: Red;">*</span>authorities said.
“We are aware of reports that a U.S. citizen that was allegedly fighting for Da’esh (Isamic State) has been captured by peshmerga forces in northern Iraq," a U.S. State Department official told USA TODAY. "We are in touch with Iraqi and Kurdish authorities to determine the veracity of these reports."
The official requested that his name not be used because the department was still collecting information on the detention.
The Kurdish news agency
Rudaw, citing a local commander, said Muhammad Jamal Amin is an American citizen from Virginia with a Palestinian father and Iraqi mother from Mosul. The Islamic State controls Mosul, Iraq's second largest city.
Rudaw said Amin had mistaken peshmerga territory for the Turkish border when he approached a checkpoint near the Iraqi town of Sinjar, which in recent months had been taken back from Islamic State militants.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>The peshmerga initially fired on Amin before detaining him, Rudaw reported.
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Amin had entered Syria from Turkey two months ago, Rudaw said.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Peshmerga Maj. Gen. Feisal Helkani told the Associated Press that<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Amin surrendered with a large amount of cash, three cellphones and three forms of ID.
Amin was being held by the peshmerga troops for interrogation, Helkani said.
CBS News, citing two Kurdish military sources,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>reported that Amin apparently was trying to defect.
Last week, a disillusioned former Islamic State militant reportedly<span style="color: Red;">*</span>leaked tens of thousands of documents containing the names, addresses and phone numbers of 22,000 of the group’s extremists to Sky News, the British broadcaster said.
Sky said the informant, who calls himself<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Abu Hamed, stole a memory stick containing the information from the head of the extremist group’s internal security police and passed it to its<span style="color: Red;">*</span>reporter at a secret location in Turkey.
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