Detainee may be first American ISIS fighter to turn self in
United States investigators are trying to confirm the identity of an apparent American citizen who defected from ISIS in Iraq.
There are thousands of foreigners and a handful of Americans fighting with ISIS. Over the last five years, analysts think about 100 have made it to the battlefield in Syria and Iraq. But if Mohamed Jamal Khweis' story checks out, he'll be the very one to have turned himself in, reports CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer.
Kurdish forces on the front line thought they saw something moving in the dark and fired at it. But when the sun rose, they realized it was a man.
At first they were afraid he was a suicide bomber, but Khweis came toward them shouting, "I'm a foreigner."
The Kurds say the 26-year-old simply appeared out of the desert unarmed and - in a mixture of Arabic and English - said he wanted to give himself up. He surrendered Monday at a checkpoint near the Iraqi town of Sinjar.
Kurdish video shows the young man being questioned by the Peshmerga he surrendered to.
When asked where he is from, he answers, "United States."
He was not carrying a passport, they say, but had a Virginia driver's license issued to Mohamed Jamal Khweis, along with three cell phones and about $4,000 in various currencies.
Khweis - who U.S. officials say was born in Maryland - gave himself up at the village of Golat near Tal Afar, two miles from ISIS front lines. He told the Kurds his mother was from nearby Mosul and his father was a Palestinian.
Kweis has been turned over to Kurdish intelligence. It's not yet clear what kind of access the Americans will have to him, or whether he'll be headed home anytime soon.