TT youth found in Syrian camp

SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD Su-Lay Su, 16, from Central Trinidad, who was snatched from his mother in Syria in January, has been found in a detention centre.

A recent article in the UK newspaper The Telegraph headlined,Child of the Caliphate, said journalist Josie Ensor travelled to Syria in June and found him sewing hearts from paper and making bracelets with 80 other boys at the centre.

The article carried several photos of him inside and outside the centre.

In January, Su-Lay and his mother, former Chaguanas Borough queen Gailon Su, 45, were captured by Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the town of Al-Shafaa, trying to flee Isis. Both were taken to separate detention centres which are under the control of Kurdish forces.

Gailon, in video clips from Syria, and her daughter in TT, Sarah-Lee, 23, posting on social media, have appealed to TT authorities and international media to help find Su-Lay. From her home in Port of Spain two months ago, Sarah-Lee had told Newsday that she last saw her brother five years ago, before he left TT.

Interviewed by New York Times correspondent Rukmini Callimachi, she appealed for help to find him.

Ensor wrote in The Telegraph that after reading Callimachi's and University of Kent criminologist Dr Simon Cottee’s social media blogs about Su-Lay disappearance, she decided to travel to Syria to interview him.

Cross-referencing numerous social profiles of boys in Syrian detention centres, Ensor eventually found Su-Lay at the Houri Juvenile Deradicalisation Centre in Tal Maarouf, northeastern Syria.

Armed guards patrol the roof of the centre, she wrote, but she was permitted to meet Su-Lay and interview him. She wrote, “The boy told me he sews hearts, makes bracelets, plays football. He told me, ‘There was a football we used to play with, but it got bust.'"

Ensor said Su-Lay, whose father came from Enterprise, Chaguanas, andwas killed fighting for ISIS, last spoke to his sister in TT six months ago.

Newsday telephoned Sarah-Lee yesterday and also sent Whatsapp messages, but she did not respond.

Her appeal to government to help repatriate her mother and brother saw National Security Minister Staurt Young announcing government’s Team Nightingale, to examine the repatriation of TT nationals who went to join Isis.

Ensor questioned Su-Lay how he ended up on the battlefront with his mother. She wrote what he said.

“A car came, my step-dad told us we were going to another hotel. We were going, going, going until we got to a checkpoint with men with masks and guns. It was then I started to feel scared." He was ten.

She quoted the boy as saying that when he grew up, ISIS commanders told him, “You’re a man now."

" I really didn’t want to go," he said. "I begged my mom to help me get out of it.”

Ensor wrote that Su-Lay told her that each day his mother apologised to him, saying she was sorry for ruining his life. They spent years moving from place to place, but were caught and taken back.

“The first time Sulay was arrested," Ensor wrote, "he spent a few days in prison, but the longest of the eight stints was two months. The boy said ‘They interrogated me, beat me, told me I was a spy for America and called me a disbeliever for wanting to leave.’”

Su-Lay told her he was denied food and put in “Guantanamo Bay-style stress positions.”

One day, he said, his mother had dressed him in a niqaab (head cover) in the hope SDF fighters would mistake him for a woman, but the headscarf slipped. The journalist wrote, “As they were being pulled apart, she grabbed her son and kissed him on the head," and Gailon told her son, "I love you. Just remember I love you.”

They were bundled into trucks which sped off in different directions. That was the last time they saw one another.

As she interviewed Su-Lay, he picked at a loose thread on his T-shirt.

“They say I’m a liar," he is quoted as saying. "They ask how could I have been in the Islamic State but not with Isis. They don’t believe me."