(Zaman Al Wasl- AFP)- Turkey has detained a Japanese citizen in the south of the country on suspicion of seeking to cross the border into Syria to join ISIS, the Dogan news agency said Wednesday.
The young man aged 24, named as M.M., was detained late Tuesday in the Nizip district of the southern city of Gaziantep, close to the Syrian border.
According to Dogan, he had admitted to wanting to travel to Syria after getting to know an unnamed contact by telephone and then agreeing the cross the frontier.
He will be deported from Turkey back to Japan once the investigation is completed, the agency added.
It said he was detained during a routine check by the Turkish gendarme while being driven towards the border settlement of Karkamis.
No Japanese jihadists have been listed on the leaked ISIS data that obtained by Zaman al-Wasl. Japan was only mentioned by two jihadists, French and Indonesian nationals, said they had visited it in their registration form without revealing why and when.
The official Anatolia news agency said police had confirmed his contacts with extremists by examining messages on his mobile phone.
Long accused of not doing enough to police its border with Syria, Turkey has in the last months tightened controls, detaining dozens of foreign extremists.
The arrest of a Japanese citizen is hugely unusual, as most of those detained seeking to cross the border come from countries with large Muslim populations.
Images published by Dogan showed the bespectacled young man kneeling in the middle of the road with his hands above his head, guarded by an armed soldier.
Turkish officials said security forces Tuesday arrested 10 suspected ISIS members at the Syrian border in the Gaziantep region, including a would-be suicide bomber. Their nationalities were not disclosed.
The young man aged 24, named as M.M., was detained late Tuesday in the Nizip district of the southern city of Gaziantep, close to the Syrian border.
According to Dogan, he had admitted to wanting to travel to Syria after getting to know an unnamed contact by telephone and then agreeing the cross the frontier.
He will be deported from Turkey back to Japan once the investigation is completed, the agency added.
It said he was detained during a routine check by the Turkish gendarme while being driven towards the border settlement of Karkamis.
No Japanese jihadists have been listed on the leaked ISIS data that obtained by Zaman al-Wasl. Japan was only mentioned by two jihadists, French and Indonesian nationals, said they had visited it in their registration form without revealing why and when.
The official Anatolia news agency said police had confirmed his contacts with extremists by examining messages on his mobile phone.
Long accused of not doing enough to police its border with Syria, Turkey has in the last months tightened controls, detaining dozens of foreign extremists.
The arrest of a Japanese citizen is hugely unusual, as most of those detained seeking to cross the border come from countries with large Muslim populations.
Images published by Dogan showed the bespectacled young man kneeling in the middle of the road with his hands above his head, guarded by an armed soldier.
Turkish officials said security forces Tuesday arrested 10 suspected ISIS members at the Syrian border in the Gaziantep region, including a would-be suicide bomber. Their nationalities were not disclosed.
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