LONDON: An aid worker who was stripped of his UK citizenship has been arrested in northwest Syria by a rebel group formerly linked to Al-Qaeda.
Tauqir Sharif was captured in Atmeh, a town in Idlib province, and taken to an “unknown location,” activists in the area said.
Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), which was formerly linked to Al-Qaeda, controls parts of northwest Syria, one of the last areas of the country still in rebel hands.
According to a post on the Facebook page of Sharif’s wife, masked men searched their house in Idlib, where they live with their children. The reason for the 32-year-old Londoner’s seizure remains unclear.
His wife, with whom he traveled to Syria in 2012, has called on HTS to provide an official reason for her husband’s detention, but has not received a response.
A number of other foreign nationals linked to Sharif are said to have also been arrested, and their laptops and mobile phones confiscated.
Sharif ran an aid organization called Live Updates from Syria that works with orphans and widows and raises awareness of the humanitarian catastrophe that has unfolded in the country.
He had his British citizenship revoked in 2017 after he was assessed to be “aligned with an Al-Qaeda-aligned group,” which rendered him stateless and stranded in Syria.
Sharif denies he is linked to Al-Qaeda. “I have never aligned myself with any group involved in the conflict or taken part in any operation that is not related to my aid work,” he said in 2017.
