'MI5 is setting me up' claims ISIS suspect who longs to see his Black Country family and misses fish and chips
A suspected ISIS terrorist from the Black Country says he will not return to Britain as he is being set up by MI5.
Sajid Aslam is thought to be in Syria, but he insists he is merely a teacher living in Turkey.
Aslam is wanted by the British authorities for joining the terror group in Syria along with friends from a Muslim group based in Walsall.
His wife Lorna Moore was jailed for two and a half years after she was convicted at the Old Bailey for concealing information about his plan to travel to Syria.
Five months after another email to this newspaper pleading his innocence, Aslam has called for an independent inquiry into his and his wife's case.
In the revealing email exchange he says:
He is not an ISIS fighter and that he is a teacher in south eastern Turkey
He travelled to the Middle East to help victims of the Syrian war
He feels suicidal with the anguish of not longer seeing his wife and three children
He misses Walsall and describes his longing for food from the boroughs fish and chip shops.
However, he is refusing to give his exact location and says he will not return to the UK.
He has provided pictures allegedly showing him in his classroom, but there are no pictures of him next to Turkish landmarks and he will not engage in a Skype conversation for fear, he says, of being extradited.
He says: "All MI5, the Counter Terrorism Unit and the police have ever done in regards to my wife and I is made baseless claims and false accusations, without absolutely no evidence to substantiate them whatsoever.
"The British authorities have no interest in evidence which exonerates Muslims – they are only interested in baseless claims which they have absolutely no evidence for to portray every Muslim as an evil terrorist."
During Moore's trial, the Old Bailey was told that Aslam, of Glebe Street, Walsall, flew from Stansted Airport to Istanbul two years ago.
He then travelled to Gaziantep on the Turkish/Syrian border, meeting friends Jake Petty and Isaiah Siadatan and entering Syria to fight for ISIS.
But in his strongly-worded email to this newspaper, Aslam said he travelled secretly to to the border because 'as a Muslim my religion compelled me to' help victims of the war.
He claims he left while his wife was on holiday in Mallorca as 'to not give her the chance to talk me out of travelling to a potentially dangerous region'.
Asked why he does not return home to clear his name, Aslam, who says he has contacted a human rights lawyer to help his case, says he does not want to join 'the list of British Muslims unjustly incarcerated'.
In the same email exchange, Aslam talks about missing Walsall, the town where he was born and grew up. He describes 'longing' for fish and chips from the town.
And he adds: "Walsall is a small, uninteresting, ageing town where nothing exciting ever happens.
"But even after two years away I still feel very homesick and I long to return to my inane little Walsall very much."
In May, counter terrorism officials stepped up their search for Aslam.
Security services believed he was fighting for the Islamic State and was based in Raqqa.
When jailing Moore, Judge Charles Wide said Aslam 'plainly got there (Syria) and fought, the evidence was clear about that in my judgment'.
Also sentenced at the hearing was Ayman Shaukat, convicted of assisting friends travelling to Syria to engage in terrorism.
Alex Nash was jailed after pleading guilty to trying to join ISIS with his pregnant wife Yousma Jan, then 20.
He was intercepted in Turkey, close to the Syrian border and deported back to the UK where he was arrested.
And Kerry Thomason was given a suspended jail sentence for assisting husband Isaiah Siadatan to prepare for acts of terrorism.
In his latest email, Aslam said: "The British authorities can accuse of me being an ISIS terrorist and they can accuse my wife of planning and preparing to travel to ISIS territory – but until they can prove such with evidence they must assume we are innocent."
