Twenty-six-year-old Anwar had planned on following in his father’s footsteps and was preparing to study medicine. The family lived in Al-Nasr neighborhood, one of the most prestigious areas in Tunis.

Anwar and his girlfriend Farah told their families seven months ago that they were travelling to Switzerland to join a medical school and managed not to raise too much suspicion. They travelled from Tunisia to Swaziland, then to France, Turkey and finally to Iraq to join ISIS.

Twenty-six-year-old Anwar had planned on following in his father’s footsteps and was preparing to study medicine. The family lived in Al-Nasr neighborhood, one of the most prestigious areas in Tunis.

Anwar and his girlfriend Farah told their families seven months ago that they were travelling to Switzerland to join a medical school and managed not to raise too much suspicion. They travelled from Tunisia to Swaziland, then to France, Turkey and finally to Iraq to join ISIS.

At first, they were recruited to fight in the toughest battles in Mosul but were later made to treat injured fighters.

But with time, Anwar became disillusioned after he joined ISIS in Raqqa, Syria and began to see his comrades as “barbarians”.

Anwar secretly contacted his father to tell him the dreadful truth which he endured with Farah whom he had married and asked his father for help.

Anwar’s mother had not doubted for one moment that her son was lying about his plans to study medicine in Switzerland and she was perplexed because she says her son was “an ordinary young man who was not at all religious. It was a major turning point for our quiet family,” she says.

Father’s heart

Anwar’s father decided to travel to Turkey as soon as possible to way to bring back his son. “He was prepared to sacrifice everything: his job, money and even his own life to bring his son back from Syria,” says Widad, Bayoudh’s colleague.

Bayoudh did all he could to reach his son and even took a long, unpaid vacation to search tirelessly for his son.

After spending considerable efforts and time in Turkey, Bayoudh managed to get in touch with his son and convinced him to run away and surrender himself to the Free Syrian Army, which eventually sent Anwar to the Turkish authorities who detained him for a while.

The nightmare appeared to be coming to a close. After Bayoudh communicated the good news to his wife, she joined her husband in Turkey to finish the procedures of receiving their son before returning to Tunisia. 

But in tragic, ironical twist of fate, Anwar’s father became one of the victims of the attack on Ataturk Airport in Istanbul on June 28. Waiting impatiently for his son Anwar, Bayoudh was sitting at the airport’s waiting hall for the arrival of his wife from Tunis when he was struck dead by shrapnel. 

Widespread controversy

Bayoudh was recently buried in the city of Ksour Essef in the Mahdia Governorate, in southern Tunisia, in a large burial ceremony. Anwar is receiving psychological treatment at Tunisian Medical Hospital (TMH) amid public outrage. 

A wave of discontent went viral at the decision to keep Anwar at the TMH instead of imprisoning him. Human rights activists however called for self-restraint. They say it is now urgent to find serious solutions to accommodate and rehabilitate former members of terrorist groups to avoid their negative impacts on society and prevent recidivism.