A Virginia man who was fighting with the Islamic State group in northern Iraq was detained by Kurdish military forces Monday while apparently trying to flee to Turkey, according to media reports.
The Kurdish news agency Rudaw, citing a local commander, said Muhammad Jamal Amin is an American citizen with a Palestinian father and Iraqi mother from Mosul.
Rudaw said Amin had mistaken the peshmerga territory for the Turkish border when he approached a checkpoint near the Iraqi town of Sinjar. Amin had entered Syria from Turkey two months ago, Rudaw said.
Kurdish military officials told Rudaw that cellphones, money and ID cards were seized.
CBS News, citing two Kurdish military sources, reported that Amin apparently was trying to defect. Kurdish TV showed the ID cards that apparently identified Amin, who was shown being questioned by Kurdish authorities, CBS said.
The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad did not immediately respond to a request for comment from USA Today.
Last week, a disillusioned, former ISIS militant reportedly 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 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 reporter at a secret location in Turkey.
