Israeli convicted for training with Islamic State in Syria

Ahmad Sorbaji, 23, of Umm al-Fahm found guilty of entering an enemy country and receiving military training

By Gavriel Fiske

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23 September 2014, 6:15 pm

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Gavriel Fiske is a reporter at The Times of Israel

A fighter from the Islamic State group, armed with a knife and an automatic weapon, next to captured Syrian army soldiers and officers, following the battle for the Tabqa air base, in Raqqa, Syria. (photo credit: AP/Raqqa Media Center of the Islamic State group)

An Israeli citizen was found guilty Tuesday of traveling to an enemy country and joining Islamic State during a four-month stay in Syria earlier this year.

Ahmad Sorbaji, 23, of Umm al-Fahm, was found by the Haifa District Court to have entered Syria, a country with which Israel is officially at war, and to have received military training from Syrian rebel groups, including Islamic State, with the intention of fighting in the Syrian civil war.

According to the prosecution, Sorbaji left Israel on January 16, 2014, for Turkey, and then made his way across the Syrian border. He returned to Israel on April 20, 2014, again via Turkey, and was arrested at Ben-Gurion Airport.

Sorbaji’s attorney did not deny his actions in Syria, but argued that they had no bearing on the security of Israel, and that Israel had no legal jurisdiction to try him for his actions abroad.

However, Judge Orit Kantor asserted in her decision that undergoing “military training in an enemy state, particularly in Syria and in the Islamic State organization, includes, by its nature, a security offense that carries a great danger to the security of Israel.”

The sentence is to be handed down at a later date.

Thousands of radicalized Muslims from countries around the world have joined the Islamic State. European countries especially have feared an influx of returning citizens who could use their combat experience in Syria or Iraq to carry out domestic terror attacks, a concern shared by Israel.

Some 10 Arab citizens of Israel have left the country to join the Islamic State, a Shin Bet security service source was quoted by the Israel Hayom newspaper as saying in September.

An additional number is believed to have traveled to join more moderate rebel groups such as the Free Syrian Army. Several Israeli Arabs have reportedly been killed in Syria.

The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terror Information Center released a report in May that said there were some 5,000 foreign Arab fighters waging war in Syria and that they constituted “the spine” of extremist organizations such the Al-Nusra Front and Islamic State.

“The phenomenon is dangerous because all those who enter that arena receive military training and are exposed to extremist global jihad ideology, and there is the risk that they will be used, at the end of the day, to carry out terror attacks against the State of Israel,” the Shin Bet internal security agency said.

Last week it was reported that Rabiya Shahade, 26, from Nazareth, has been fighting in Syria with Islamic State and has been in that country for about a year. Shahade, who goes by the name Abu Musaav Alsafuri in Syria, was described in a Yedioth Ahronoth report as having had Christian and Jewish friends before he became radicalized. He left behind in Israel a wife and newborn son.

In May, Idris Abu Alqayan, 23, a Bedouin Israeli citizen from the Negev, was charged with conspiracy to commit a crime and aiding an unlawful exit from the country after he allegedly helped two family members leave Israel for Syria to join the Islamic State.

Mitch Ginsburg contributed to this report.