A former British soldier who was arrested in Turkey on suspicion of terror offences after he joined the struggle against Isis in Syria has been released on bail after four months in jail, his family confirmed.
Joe Robinson, 24, from Accrington, Lancashire, was on holiday in July in the town of Didim, about 62 miles (100km) north of Bodrum, south-west Turkey, when police raided the resort where he was staying with his Bulgarian fiancee and her mother.
After six days of questioning, Turkish authorities released his fiancee, Mira Rojkan, 22, and her mother, but accused Robinson of being a member of a terrorist organisation after he spent a month in Syria with Kurdish militia in 2015.
Appearing in court on Friday, Robinson denied the charges, insisting he worked as a combat medic during the month he was in Syria, while Rojkan was charged with “terrorism propaganda”, the BBC reported.
Robinson’s father, Andrew, 53, a telecommunications engineer, told the Guardian: “We’re just over the moon, we can’t believe he’s finally out. He’s been in prison for the past four months and we’ve had very little information about his case in that time. It’s just great that the process is finally moving. His mum is with him now and she called my daughter about an hour ago to tell her. I honestly was beginning to think he may never get out.”
Andrew Robinson said his son had been released on judicial licence and would remain in Turkey until his next court hearing on 12 March.
Robinson, who toured Afghanistan with the Duke of Lancaster’s regiment in 2012, travelled to Syria in July 2015, telling his family he had gone to join the French foreign legion. There, he served for about a month as a combat medic alongside the People’s Protection Units of Syrian Kurdistan (YPG) during one of the bloodiest phases of the war with Isis. He then crossed the border to join the peshmerga, the government-backed army of Iraqi Kurdistan fighting Isis in Iraq, before returning to the UK in November 2015.
Membership of the YPG is illegal in Turkey. The Turkish government has long argued that the militia is a terrorist organisation affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), which has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state for decades. The YPG is not a proscribed terrorist group in the UK and is supported in its fight against Isis by the US military.
Robinson has said he travelled to Syria after becoming increasingly incensed by Isis’s gory propaganda videos and what he saw as Britain’s inaction in Syria.
