‘I don’t regret anything,’ smiling ISIS militant on death row tells Sky News

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20 mins ago

August 22, 2025

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Blindfolded and under armed guard, a captured ISIS fighter is brought before us.

When the blindfold is removed, he doesn’t look surprised to see a camera crew and several counterterrorism officers, one of whom interrogated him when he was first caught.

The 24-year-old militant is on death row in Somalia awaiting execution by firing squad, having been accused of being an ISIS commander, as well as a sniper and a member of a two-man bomb squad.

We’ve been given extremely rare access to speak to him and another ISIS recruit in a secure location in Puntland, the semi-autonomous region of northern Somalia where the terror group has been seizing territory and ruling over terrified communities.

US and Somali commanders say ISIS is running its global headquarters in Puntland’s caves, financing its activities worldwide.

Muthar Hamid Qaayid is from Yemen and came to Somalia via a sea route where we’ve witnessed how challenging it is to halt the flow of militant travellers.

He insists he wasn’t an active participant in the two-man bomb squad – and seems entirely unbothered about the situation he now finds himself in.

“I didn’t press the button,” he says. “I just looked. The other man made the bomb and set it off. I didn’t come here to kill Muslims.”

His partner blew himself up as he was planting the bomb in Bosaso city centre and realised he had been discovered.

Officers believe he detonated it prematurely.

The man in front of us was injured, and we are told he had incriminating bomb-making equipment with him.

I ask him if he has regrets about his involvement and joining the militant group.

“I don’t regret anything,” he says, smiling. “Even if you take me out of the room now and execute me, I don’t regret anything.” Again, another smile.

“If they shoot me or hang me, I don’t mind. In the end, I don’t care.”

Tellingly, he says his family does not like ISIS. “If they found me here, they’d be upset,” he says.

Despite persistent questions, he doesn’t shift much. “I’m not thinking,” he insists. “There’s nothing. I’m just waiting for death.”

I ask if he’d heard of people being killed by the bombs he’s accused of planting.

“Yes, but they don’t kill all people,” he insists.

But what about killing anyone, I suggest, slightly puzzled.

“They don’t kill everyone,” he continues. There’s a pause. “Only infidels”.

Infidels is a term many recruits use to describe those who simply don’t agree with their strict interpretation of Sharia – that can include Muslims as well as other religions.

Officials show us multiple foreign passports recovered from ISIS cave hideouts in Puntland and from those they’ve captured or killed.

There are passports for whole families from South Africa, including children, as well as ones from Germany, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Bahrain.

There are also handfuls of IDs which show European faces.

Since a Puntland army offensive was launched last December, just five of the 600 ISIS fighters killed have been Somalis, says Mohamed Abdirahman Dhabancad, Puntland’s political affairs representative.

‘The main target was to rule the world’

The second prisoner brought before us is from Morocco and is much more talkative.

Usman Bukukar Bin Fuad insists he was duped by ISIS and says he only travelled to Somalia because he’d heard he could make money.

“Instead, I ended up digging caves,” he says. “It was difficult to escape but when they told me to put on a suicide vest to kill Puntland forces, I said this is not what you told me I would be doing – and I escaped.”

He says he was given a weapon but never used it – a claim not believed by his captors.

“I never joined any fight,” he insists. “I had my weapon [AK47] but I just did normal duties taking supplies from location to location and following orders.”

He says he met the ISIS leader in Somalia, Abdul Qadir Mumin, several times.

“He used to visit all the ISIS camps and encourage them to fight.”

“And he’d reassure us all about going to heaven,” he adds.

It seems to lend credence to the belief that Mumin is still alive and operating – up until a few months ago anyway.

He says he was given training in sniping (which he didn’t finish) and map reading, which was interrupted when the Puntland military offensive began.

He says he travelled over from Ethiopia with six Moroccans, before meeting an Algerian recruit.

Fellow militants in the ISIS mountain stronghold were from countries including Tunisia, Libya, Tanzania, Kenya, Turkey, Argentina, Bangladesh, Sweden, and Iraq.

“The main target or focus was to rule the world,” he says. “Starting with this region as one of the gates to the world, then Ethiopia and the rest of the world.

“I heard so much talk about sending ISIS fighters to Bosaso, Ethiopia or Yemen. Sending people to other parts of the world and ruling the world was all part of the plan.”

The captives’ information has added to the belief that Puntland and Somalia is just the tip of a huge ISIS problem which is spreading and is able to cause terror in a range of ways.

Alex Crawford reports from Somalia with specialist producer Chris Cunningham and camera operator Richie Mockler. Photography by Chris Cunningham

World

What’s it like with the National Guard on the streets of DC?

Published

20 mins ago

August 22, 2025

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What's it like with the National Guard on the streets of DC?

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What’s it like on the streets of DC right now, as thousands of federal police patrol the streets?

Who is Steve Witkoff, the US envoy regularly meeting Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu to broker peace in Ukraine and Gaza?

And why is Californian Governor Gavin Newsom now tweeting like Donald Trump?

Martha Kelner and Mark Stone answer your questions.

If you’ve also got a question you’d like the Trump100 team to answer, you can email it to trump100@sky.uk.

You can also watch all episodes on our YouTube channel.

World

It’s been a confusing week – and Trump’s been made to look weak

Published

20 mins ago

August 22, 2025

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It’s been a confusing week.

The Monday gathering of European leaders and Ukraine’s president with Donald Trump at the White House was highly significant.

Ukraine latest: Trump changes tack

The leaders went home buoyed by the knowledge that they’d finally convinced the American president not to abandon Europe. He had committed to provide American “security guarantees” to Ukraine.

The details were sketchy, and sketched out only a little more through the week (we got some noise about American air cover), but regardless, the presidential commitment represented a clear shift from months of isolationist rhetoric on Ukraine – “it’s Europe’s problem” and all the rest of it.

Yet it was always the case that, beyond that clear achievement for the Europeans, Russia would have a problem with it.

Trump’s envoy’s language last weekend – claiming that Putin had agreed to Europe providing “Article 5-like” guarantees for Ukraine, essentially providing it with a NATO-like collective security blanket – was baffling.

Russia gives two fingers to the president

And throughout this week, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has repeatedly and predictably undermined the whole thing, pointing out that Russia would never accept any peace plan that involved any European or NATO troops in Ukraine.

“The presence of foreign troops in Ukraine is completely unacceptable for Russia,” he said yesterday, echoing similar statements stretching back years.

Remember that NATO’s “eastern encroachment” was the justification for Russia’s “special military operation” – the invasion of Ukraine – in the first place. All this makes Trump look rather weak.

It’s two fingers to the president, though interestingly, the Russian language has been carefully calibrated not to poke Trump but to mock European leaders instead. That’s telling.

The bilateral meeting (between Putin and Zelenskyy) hailed by Trump on Monday as agreed and close – “within two weeks” – looks decidedly doubtful.

Maybe that’s why he went along with Putin’s suggestion that there be a bilateral, not including Trump, first.

It’s easier for the American president to blame someone else if it’s not his meeting, and it doesn’t happen.

NATO defence chiefs met on Wednesday to discuss the details of how the security guarantees – the ones Russia won’t accept – will work.

European sources at the meeting have told me it was all a great success. And to the comments by Lavrov, a source said: “It’s not up to Lavrov to decide on security guarantees. Not up to the one doing the threatening to decide how to deter that threat!”

The argument goes that it’s not realistic for Russia to say from which countries Ukraine can and cannot host troops.

Would Trump threaten force?

The problem is that if Europe and the White House want Russia to sign up to some sort of peace deal, then it would require agreement from all sides on the security arrangements.

The other way to get Russia to heel would be with an overwhelming threat of force. Something from Trump, like: “Vladimir – look what I did to Iran…”. But, of course, Iran isn’t a nuclear power.

Something else bothers me about all this. The core concept of a “security guarantee” is an ironclad obligation to defend Ukraine into the future.

Future guarantees would require treaties, not just a loose promise. I don’t see Trump’s America truly signing up to anything that obliges them to do anything.

A layered security guarantee which builds over time is an option, but from a Kremlin perspective, would probably only end up being a repeat of history and allow them another “justification” to push back.

Image and reality don’t seem to match

Among Trump’s stream of social media posts this week was an image of him waving his finger at Putin in Alaska. It was one of the few non-effusive images from the summit.

He posted it next to an image of former president Richard Nixon confronting Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev – an image that came to reflect American dominance over the Soviet Union.

That may be the image Trump wants to portray. But the events of the past week suggest image and reality just don’t match.

The past 24 hours in Ukraine have been among the most violent to date.

World

At least 17 dead in Colombia after car bombing and helicopter attack

Published

20 mins ago

August 22, 2025

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At least 17 dead in Colombia after car bombing and helicopter attack

At least 17 people were killed after a car bombing and an attack on a police helicopter in Colombia, officials have said.

Authorities in the southwest city of Cali said a vehicle loaded with explosives detonated near a military aviation school, killing five people and injuring more than 30.

Authorities said at least 12 died in the attack on a helicopter transporting personnel to an area in Antioquia in northern Colombia, where they were to destroy coca leaf crops – the raw material used in the production of cocaine.

Antioquia governor Andres Julian said a drone attacked the helicopter as it flew over coca leaf crops.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro attributed both incidents to dissidents of the defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

He said the aircraft was targeted in retaliation for a cocaine seizure that allegedly belonged to the Gulf Clan.

Who are FARC, and are they still active?

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a Marxist guerrilla organisation, was the largest of the country’s rebel groups, and grew out of peasant self-defence forces.

It was formed in 1964 as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party, carrying out a series of attacks against political and economic targets.

In 2016, after more than 50 years of civil war, FARC rebels and the Colombian government signed a peace deal.

It officially ceased to be an armed group the following year – but some small dissident groups rejected the agreement and refused to disarm.

According to a report by Colombia’s Truth Commission in 2022, fighting between government forces, FARC, and the militant group National Liberation Army had killed around 450,000 people between 1985 and 2018.

Both FARC dissidents and members of the Gulf Clan operate in Antioquia.

It comes as a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that coca leaf cultivation is on the rise in Colombia.

The area under cultivation reached a record 253,000 hectares in 2023, according to the UN’s latest available report.