SYDNEY MAN MOHAMED ZUHBI IS WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE BY AMERICAN COURTS, WRITES PAUL TOOHEY
If he is still alive, Australian-Syrian citizen Mohamed Zuhbi's life choices are like all those who support the Islamic State - considerably narrowed. Unwelcome in Australia, unless to face long prison time, he is now wanted in Texas after the US District Court in Houston issued an arrest warrant for him two months ago.
Zuhbi, aka Mohamed Ibn Albaraa, 25, of Sydney, is accused of providing the means for two young Texan men to make their way to Syria to fight for the Islamic State. Zuhbi is believed to have left Australia in 2013 - around the same time as others whose names are now well known in Australia such as Mohammad Ali Baryalei, Khaled Sharrouf, Mohamed Elomar and Neil Prakash - also bound for Syria.
Zuhbi, a softly spoken man who has claimed to be an aid worker, hasn't been heard from for more than a year when his last apparent Facebook post praised ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as "a man that history, in Sha Allah, will never forget". 
But the existence of the warrant suggests US authorities believe Zuhbi may be alive, somewhere in Turkey or, more likely, Syria. It also reveals that as ISIS fighters begin to be caught in large numbers, with almost 1900 detained by Iraqi forces in the recent battle for Ramadi, west of Baghdad, plans are being made to bring western fighters home.
Houston court documents show Zuhbi has a place set aside for him in a US federal prison should he be found.
The latest figures from intelligence consultant the Soufan Group indicate Australia has about the same number of foreign fighters (it estimates a "non-official" figure of 255) in Syria and Iraq as the US, despite being a 12th its population size.
Greg Barton, counter-terror expert with Deakin University, says it was initially expected that no ISIS fighters would be taken alive in battle. But the large number of combatants seized in Ramadi was unexpected - and there could be thousands when Mosul, in northern Iraq, is liberated.
"There's likely to be enormous numbers in Mosul, including a significant number of Australians, and the short answer is that it is not clear what will happen to them," Barton says.
"This was an abstract question until a few months ago. Now it's real." If fighters are not fast-tracked for execution, they would go to temporary government prisons in Syria and Iraq, or be held by factions while their futures are decided.
"A Syrian government and Iraqi government could well say it was struggling to deal with them and ask the source country to repatriate them," Barton says. "I think the public answer is that we wouldn't want ours back. The reality may be more complex." The FBI flushed out Zuhbi when trying to find young Mexican-born Muslim convert Sixto Ramiro Garcia, who went missing from Houston in early 2014. His Facebook account linked him to school friend Asher Abid Khan, who had attended a mosque with Garcia in Spring Cypress in outer Houston.
In 2013, Khan, then 19, moved to Sydney to live with an uncle, apparently objecting to his Pakistan-born parents working in a business that sold alcohol. He found life here no better for a Muslim. He despised the comforts of Australia, writing that his "brothers (in Syria) are in so much hardship".
When Khan messaged Garcia, asking him to join him in Syria, Garcia had little hesitation. In Sydney, Khan was able to quickly make contact with the local underground who connected him to Zuhbi, who had left Australia before passports were being routinely cancelled.
Zuhbi had been active among the street-preacher firebrands of the Parramatta St Dawah, where he came under the influence of Australia's then most-virulent ISIS recruiter Mohammad Ali Baryalei, presumed killed in air strikes in late 2014.
On   January 11, 2014, Khan messaged Zuhbi, saying: "I wanna join ISIS can you help?" By   February 2014, with arrangements allegedly in place to meet Zuhbi in Antakya, close to the Turkish border with Syria, Garcia was on his way from Houston to Istanbul, via Heathrow. Khan flew from Sydney to Istanbul, arriving first.
Upon arrival, Khan flew straight back to Houston after - according to the US prosecutors - being tricked by his worried family, who knew of his plan and lied to him that his mother was desperately ill.
Garcia landed in Istanbul, panicked to learn Khan had gone home. Khan messaged him the necessary contacts for Zuhbi and promised he'd be back once he'd seen his mother. Khan never did go back to Istanbul.
In   August 2014, at the same time as Zuhbi had allegedly helped Garcia find his way to the ISIS front lines, he appeared by video link from Turkey on the SBS program Insight, claiming to be no more than an aid worker who raised money to help Syrians brutalised by the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Asked about his loyalties, he was "most vocally supportive of the Islamic State. I believe they are the future of Syria and I believe they are the future of the Islamic empire".
The charges he faces of conspiracy to murder and supporting a designated terror organisation shows the US views him as a significant conduit for fighters to Syria.
As for Khan, who was arrested in Houston last year, The Washington Postwrote a sympathetic story describing him sitting in Ataturk Airport, deciding that he no longer wanted to join ISIS.
"The 19-year-old pulled out his phone and dialled," the Post story stated. "I want to come home, Khan told his father, Mohammed Abid Khan, who sat huddled in his living room here (in Texas) with his wife and other children." Khan's lawyers say since Khan returned from Istanbul in early 2014 he's had no ongoing jihadist motivation. US prosecutors will argue it doesn't matter because the case was established from the moment Khan reached out to both Garcia and Zuhbi on Facebook from Sydney.
They will also remind Khan that his alleged enticement of Garcia resulted in his friend dying on some ISIS frontline.
Garcia had messaged Khan that he had finally joined ISIS fighters in   August, 2014. By   September, Garcia's communications ceased. By   December, Garcia's mother received a message that he was dead, at the age of 20.
Khan is on conditional release, awaiting trial. He's wearing a monitoring anklet, living in the custody of his parents and studying by day at the University of Houston, where he can only use the internet for study purposes. He also teaches Sunday school at his local mosque.
The case against Zuhbi has been complicated after the Texas court demanded that federal prosecutors explain why this man, an Australian-Syrian, should be charged in a US court.
They responded that Zuhbi had conspired with two US citizens to support a terrorist organisation.
The overall picture is that life has got much harder for jihadists. They are experiencing crushing losses in battle; their identities are much better understood; and the journey to Syria and Iraq has been so choked that would-be fighters are reduced to messing about in tinnies in Far North Queensland.The concern is that those who can't make an appointment with glorious death in Syria or Iraq will become ever more dangerous at home.