CENTRALBATAM.CO.ID, IRAQ –For Abdelrahman al-Azy the task was brutal but the justifications were simple. As a member of ISIS, he must follow the instructions of his local emir or commander. The order: to help kill a man in cold blood.
As directed, al-Azy drove a fellow ISIS militant to the home of a SWAT member, an elite unit of the Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service.
The 23-year-old sat in the car as his co-conspirator stepped out of the vehicle, then shot and killed their victim.
At the time, al-Azy says he felt proud of the murder, but now sitting in handcuffs, he told CNN he regrets his actions and believes they were wrong.
Al-Azy is one of three men who spoke to CNN exclusively from inside a Kurdish-run prison at an undisclosed location in northern Iraq.
This is unprecedented access to a group of men who all admit they played a role in an ISIS attack on the Iraqi city of Kirkuk in October.
The commando-style raid involved a couple of hundred ISIS fighters, at least two suicide bombers, and local sleeper cells. It left 96 people dead and was considered by many a distraction from the battle to recapture Mosul, ISIS’s stronghold in Iraq.
Each of the three men CNN spoke to played very different roles and held varying degrees of closeness to the terror organization. Together, their stories draw a picture of how the organization functions on a local-level at a time when it is fighting for its very survival.
All three of the men say they agreed to speak to CNN and were not coerced by the Kurdish officials that run the detention center. Each remains under investigation for their crimes.
