So, Jamie Read and James Hughes seem to have been lying.
Jihadi hunters... or fantasists? They said they risked their lives to battle ISIS in Syria. So why do witnesses insist these UK fighters were miles from action... and only in it for money?
Jamie Read and James Hughes claimed they went to Syria to battle ISIS
Said they went to avenge the beheading of British aid worker Alan Henning
But an investigation has revealed they exaggerated their story of fighting
Believed they only went to obtain videos and pictures to sell for moneyTo the world, they were the heroic former British soldiers who risked their lives in battle against IS in order to avenge the beheading of aid worker Alan Henning.
Yet an investigation by The Mail on Sunday, drawing on testimonies by ex-soldiers who were with them, can show that Jamie Read and James Hughes greatly exaggerated their story of having gone out to Syria to fight – and, in fact, went there to obtain videos and pictures to sell for financial gain.
In a TV interview on their return, the pair relived a dramatic gun battle with jihadis and claimed that they had agreed a death pact if they feared capture was imminent.
Read, 24, and Hughes, 26, were reported to have travelled to the Middle East last month to join Westerners fighting with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) – the mortal enemy of IS – to protect the beleaguered city of Kobane. In reality, they were more than 250 miles away, deep in Kurdish-controlled territory in North-East Syria on the border with Iraq.
And far from diving for cover under fire, according to a former German soldier who was alongside them, they spent most of their time in boredom, drinking tea, watching TV and feasting on local cuisine.
Despite the pair saying they paid for the trip themselves, Graham Penrose, who runs a security consultancy firm, part-funded their trip and says they told him they had travelled to the region for business, not to fight.
Speaking out to set the record straight after severing ties with the pair, he said: ‘To use and trade off the death of Alan Henning, making statements on very sensitive issues, combined with encouraging, in my view, people to go out and help the Kurds, is incredibly irresponsible and dishonest.’
The two former soldiers insist they were in Syria to take up arms with the Kurds and that they came under enemy fire, but our investigation demonstrates that their dramatic claims don’t quite add up…
THE CLAIM - They went to Syria to fight IS and avenge the death of Alan Henning.
During an emotive interview the pair gave to Sky News on December 17, Mr Read said: ‘Alan Henning – aid worker, British – put him on his hands and knees and cut his head off, you know what I mean. Can you really find justification in sitting back here and doing nothing?’
This followed an interview with The Sun newspaper on December 5, apparently conducted over Skype from the frontline in Syria, in which they said they were inspired to fight against IS to avenge Alan Henning’s beheading.
THE TRUTH - They went to make money.
The former soldiers, who met on a bodyguarding course, have made several attempts in the past year to establish themselves in the security industry. They had pitched to Mr Penrose’s company, TMG Corporate Services, two separate proposals to go to Libya and Nigeria over the summer to obtain intelligence, video footage and stills, but were rejected.
Undeterred, they hatched a plan to travel to Syria to pick up intelligence, video footage, and pictures which they could sell through their business, The Terrorism and Conflict Research Center – The Pathfinder Group. On November 6, they secured a meeting with Siobhan Sinnerton, Channel 4 commissioning editor, news and current affairs, and Dan Reed, a BAFTA award-winning director, about contributing footage to an episode in the investigative series, Dispatches.
Mr Read says a verbal agreement was made that if the pair managed to obtain useable footage from the GoPro action cameras they were provided with, they would sell it to Dispatches.
However, the limited footage they did capture – showing them driving along a road en route to Syria and running through a village next to the YPG control base they were stationed at – was never sent to Dispatches and instead sold to Sky News for £6,000 on their return, and shown with their interview.
On the strength of the Dispatches deal, Mr Penrose’s company reached an agreement with the pair to gain additional footage and stills to be sold onto media outlets around the world.
TMG Corporate Services funded one of their flights and agreed to pay the pair a subsistence of €200 (£157) a week while in Syria.
They do not dispute the agreements made with Dispatches and Mr Penrose or that they received £6,000 from Sky News, with Mr Read adding: ‘It wasn’t that we went out there to make money. We went to help the Kurds.
‘If we are going to make money on our return due to our video footage and stills, fair enough.’
THE CLAIM - They were under fire by IS in an abandoned village in North-East Syria rigged with explosives.
Mr Read told Sky News the pair had been out on patrol towards a nearby village where IS militants had been holed up. ‘All of a sudden we just got opened up on. Quite a lot of small arms ... quite a lot of AKs [AK47 assault rifles] and they were quite close.
‘There were rounds coming in and they were really close – they were pinging and they were bouncing, whizzing over your head.’
The pair said they had to flee through a village ‘littered with IEDs [improvised explosive devices]’ before returning to base.
THE TRUTH - They went to the village on their own accord as they were ‘bored as hell’ and just ‘wanted a little action’, firing at IS from 2km away.
Michael Markens, 30, a former German soldier who spent more than two weeks with the pair in a YPG patrol base in North-East Syria, and another Westerner who spent three weeks with them, said they all went out that day because they were bored. The village was just yards from their patrol base – an old school building – and they knew the location of explosives as they had been planted by the YPG as a trap for IS.
Mr Markens said: ‘We just shot with AK47s and M16s at an enemy position 2km away because we were frustrated.
‘You have to understand... all we had was talking to each other and that was everything. Then on the way back, IS fired a couple of shots with a sniper rifle but not nearly close to us so it was not dangerous at all.’
The second ex-soldier added: ‘We were bored as hell, just wanted a little action. I have listened to it [the Sky News interview]. No, we weren’t dragged out there and then left there to die. That’s not how it was.’
Mr Markens added: ‘They didn’t come to fight. They said it to me. James told me: “I don’t want to risk my ass, bro.”
‘We drank chai, watched TV, talked to each other, cleaned our weapons.’
When asked whether the patrol base was safe, the other ex-soldier said: ‘I would say that’s relatively safe. In levels of safety, nowhere near Kobane. We were at summer camp [laughs].’
Mr Read stands by his account that they engaged in fire with IS, but denies that they went because they were bored, explaining that they were giving ‘harassment fire’ and ‘getting eyes on the IS position’.
Mr Hughes says he did not fire a single bullet at IS and they did go out because they were bored.
THE CLAIM - They were vulnerable to kidnap and had a death pact prepared if capture was imminent.
The pair said on Sky News they had made a suicide pact and recorded video messages for their loved ones in case the worst happened.
Mr Read said: ‘We wouldn’t get captured, bottom line. We’re not getting our heads paraded on YouTube. We made that vow before we went.
‘Nobody wants to be captured by IS. So for us, as harsh as it sounds, it’s probably the better way to go.
‘It’s the old saying: “You keep a round for each other”.’
THE TRUTH - There was little or no risk of kidnap.
According to Mr Markens, the risk of kidnapping was ‘near zero’. ‘They had to cross no man’s land and the Kurds protect us very well,’ he said. The other former soldier agreed, saying the risk was ‘little to none’.
Mr Read said the Westerners he was with in Syria also expressed fear of being kidnapped. He said: ‘You’re in the middle of Syria and the risk of kidnap is zero?’
THE CLAIM - They were fighting in Kobane.
According to The Sun article, they were speaking from the frontline and were ‘put in touch with Kurdish contacts who took them in a convoy of 4x4s the 360 miles east to Kobane in Syria’. The claim initially appeared in a front-page article in The Observer on November 23, stating that they were ‘understood to be in Rojava, Northern Syria, helping to defend ... Kobane.’
THE TRUTH - They were more than 250 miles away in a YPG-controlled area of North-East Syria near the border with Iraq.
The ex-military Westerner who met them in Irbil, Iraq, and travelled with them to Syria, said he would bet his ‘left testicle’ they were nowhere near Kobane. Mr Markens agreed, adding: ‘You cannot travel to Kobane through Syria. It’s really dangerous.’
By the time they were giving the interview over Skype, on December 4, the pair were en route back to Britain and travelling through Dubai. Mr Penrose received a Skype message from Mr Read that day saying they were ‘good, having a beer, chilling lol [laugh out loud]’.
Mr Read admits the interview was given from their hotel in Irbil, Iraq – not Syria – but says they never said they were in Kobane and The Sun did not check this with them.
Asked about the claim the men had travelled to Kobane in a convoy of 4x4s, a Sun spokesman said: ‘This information was provided to us by the men.’
THE CLAIM - They were taken to a ‘safe house’ on arrival in Iraq.
‘This was one of the most frightening processes you can go through, you know, the paranoia: through the roof,’ Mr Read said during the Sky interview. ‘When we got to the safe house... it’s sort of dodgy-looking, so you think “I don’t really like this”. At one point, you think: “Is this the point I’m going to get handed over?’’
THE TRUTH - They didn’t like the look of the safe house – so checked into a four-star hotel.
They were met by an Iraqi contact in Irbil who offered his apartment for the night after they had arrived at 3am. They panicked and asked Mr Penrose to book them into the four-star 35 Rooms Hotel, where they stayed for two nights. They do not dispute this. Last night, Mr Read said the Sky News interview gave a misleading impression, saying: ‘It was over-exaggerated by Sky, definitely.’
He maintains they were motivated to go to fight on behalf of the Kurdish YPG, but says he did not reveal the extent of their intentions to Mr Penrose. However, he accepts they were not much help to YPG and were used as propaganda tools, adding that ‘99 per cent of time we were bored’.
‘I do have a business and yes, we planned on selling video, and yes we planned on selling stills,’ he said.
‘At the end of the day, we were joining the YPG, we wanted to fight… on the other side of that, we did say to Graham Penrose we’re going to take photos, we’re going to document it, we’re gonna make videos, sell them when we’re back.’ But Mr Hughes, who has served three tours of Afghanistan, said last night he did not fire a single bullet against IS and that they were there to ‘support’ the YPG, not to fight.
‘We went out there to help to get eyes on the ground and help the Kurds,’ he said. He said he would have used his assault rifle if he needed to, but admitted the extent of his and Mr Read’s help was limited and that they were mainly used as ‘propaganda’ by the Kurds.
A Sky News spokeswoman said: ‘The coverage on Sky News around Jamie Read and James Hughes’ time in Syria was based entirely on their own experiences and in their own words. The allegation that we exaggerated their story is wholly false.’
Topic: 'Islamic State' a.k.a. ISIL