Ahmed Mufti, a Dutch Kurd and former sergeant with the Dutch Army, was put on terrorist list by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs for joining Islamic State’s (ISIS) militants, local media reported on Tuesday.

Mufti was born in 1998 in the city of Duhok in Iraqi Kurdistan, the Dutch newspaper AD reported.

He was employed by the Dutch army as a sergeant with the 931^st squadron of the Air base in Gilze-Rijen, where Dutch apaches are based. However, after he joined ISIS in 2015, the Dutch Ministry of Defence fired him.

Moreover, the Dutch Foreign Ministry put him on the terrorist list on Monday in order to block him from receiving or sending money, and his bank accounts were frozen.

Mufti worked with the Communication Information Systems (CIS) for operations and had knowledge of codes that are used by soldiers and air force pilots on the ground. However, since then codes are being regularly changed.

The mother of Ahmed Mufti couldn’t believe the news when she found out her son was put on the terrorist list.

“My son a terrorist?” said Mufti’s mother, who lives in Dutch town of Breda. “I know my son, I know his heart. He would never do such a thing,” she told AD.

He is not the only ISIS suspect who was put on the list. An additional four women and men were put on the list by the Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders.

Hundreds of ISIS militants were listed by the Dutch government.

Although the majority of the Kurds support secular Peshmerga fighters in Iraq and the People’s Defense Units (YPG) in Syria, there are also roughly 400 to 500 Kurds who joined the Islamic State.

However, most of them were killed in joint operations by the Kurdish Counter-Terrorism Department and the US-led coalition –that have been cooperating since August 2014 to remove ISIS leadership from the battlefield.

The Kurds have provided intelligence to the US-led coalition which led to targeted airstrikes taking out local senior Kurdish ISIS leaders such as Mullah Shwan in September 2015 near Hawija and Falah al-Kurdi in October 2015.

This is also not the first time a Dutch Kurd joins Jihadist groups. Khalid K. from the town of Almere, also known as Abu Abdulrahman al-Iraqi was killed in February 2016, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters said.

Khalid K. was already monitored by the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD in 2011 and spent 14 days in jail for ties to terrorist groups. After his release he immediately traveled to Syria to join the al Qaida-affiliated group Jabhat al-Nusra, and later joined ISIS. In 2016, he was killed on the battlefield.

Source: aranews.net