WATCH: (Scroll Down For Video) An Iraqi Kurdish general has said that an American member of the Islamic State militant group has surrendered to Kurdish forces in northern Iraq, the Associated Press reports.
Maj. Gen. Feisal Helkani of the peshmerga identified the man as Mohammed Jamal Amin. According to reports in the Kurdish media, Amin is 27 and thought to have been born in Virginia.
The Kurdish publication Rudaw reports that Amin had told the troops that he had entered Syria two months prior and subsequently headed to Iraq. He was initially mistaken for a suicide bomber, but peshmerga forces now believe that Amin had been hoping to leave the country and had mistaken peshmerga territory near Sinjar for the Turkish border, Rudaw reports.
Video posted to social media shows the man identified as Amin telling the Kurdish forces that he is from America and that he had been in the Iraqi city of Mosul. A number of images published by the Kurdish press appear to show that he has a Virginia driver’s license. Helkani has said that Amin was carrying a large amount of cash.
The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad told CBS News that it could not confirm that an American had been detained. Federal prosecutors have charged 80 men and women over alleged connections to the Islamic State, though some estimates suggest that as many as 250 U.S. citizens have traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight for the extremist group.
