A student from Manchester University who has been on Stop the War marches in London and Tony Blair’s Sedgefield constituency has been arrested in northern Iraq amid concerns that he may have been fighting coalition forces in Iraq.
Urslaan Khan, 21, originally from the prosperous Teesside town of Yarm near Middlesbrough, was taking an Arabic Studies degree at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Manchester University. Khan was spending his third year of the course at the University of Alexandria in Egypt where he was learning Arabic. His father, Abdul Khan, confirmed that his son had gone missing last month and had not been in touch for weeks. A friend of his son’s in Egypt told the family that he had travelled to Mosul in northern Iraq, although the reason for his visit was unclear.
Sources in Britain and Iraq have confirmed that a British national matching Khan’s description has been arrested and interrogated by Kurdish forces. He is being held in the northern Iraqi town of Erbil, not far from the Syrian border.
| So, what kind of school was he running? Or did he skip out from his bachelor party? Found a job with an NGO? |
Khan’s father said: ’He used to call us every Saturday or Sunday from Egypt to tell us he was OK and send his love.’ He could not believe his son would have joined a radical Islamic group to fight American troops. ’Urslaan is a bit of an adventurer, a bit impulsive, and may have travelled out to Iraq to see firsthand what was going on. He was political and strong-minded like most of his family and we had been on anti-war marches together but we are strong believers in democracy.’ British authorities in Baghdad were contacted two weeks ago by Kurdish forces who confirmed they had arrested a British national. Foreign Office officials will attempt to gain consular access this week. A spokeswoman said they had not been able to travel to Erbil because of the security situation. |