An American man suspected of being a member of the Islamic State group is being repatriated to the United States after spending three days in a no man’s land between Turkey and Greece, Turkey’s Interior Ministry said Thursday.
The United States agreed to take him in and will provide him with travel documents, the ministry said, adding that the repatriation was underway.
Greece refused to take him in after Turkey had tried to send him over, which resulted in him being stuck at the Greece-Turkey border for 3 days.
The move comes a day after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington.
The man was stuck in the heavily militarised border zone after Turkey tried to expel him to Greece on Monday, but Athens refused him entry.
Turkish media have identified him as 39-year-old Mohammad Darwis B. and said he was an American citizen of Jordanian background.
The Ministry said on Thursday, the man had asked to be deported to a “third country” and chose Greece.
He had been spotted in the no man’s land for three straight days. Media reports said Turkish authorities allowed him to spend the night in a vehicle, where he was fed.
Turkey has engaged in a new push to deport foreign IS members who are held in Turkish prisons or in Syria, since it invaded parts of northeast Syria to drive away Syrian Kurdish fighters it considers to be terrorists from a border area.
Turkey’s Interior Ministry on Thursday expelled seven German and one British IS suspects to Berlin and London. The state-run Anadolu Agency said two men, four women and an infant were transported onto the tarmac at Istanbul Airport in a vehicle belonging to Turkey’s migration agency and boarded a plane bound for Berlin.
There was no information on their identities.
Three foreign IS suspects — from the United States, Denmark and Germany — were deported on Monday.
Turkey also plans to soon deport other alleged IS members, including two Irish and 11 French citizens.
Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry also said Thursday that a wanted IS suspect was detained by anti-terrorism police in a raid in Istanbul after he illegally crossed into Turkey from Syria. The ministry said the man, whom it identified as Mevlut Cuskun, was being questioned by police.
