He now says he was brainwashed. But he admits that he willingly ran away from home one morning on his way to school and joined a training camp in the desert. For about a month, he was put through military training, and he was taught how to shoot an assault rifle and how to storm a building. He had two meals a day, mostly cheese and eggs.

Soon, though, he said, “I noticed things I saw that were different from Islam.”

Back home he saw the group inflict severe punishments on men who were caught smoking cigarettes, yet in the camp, he said, he saw fighters smoking. He said he saw men having sex with other men behind the tents in the desert night. And, he said, he was increasingly put off by “the way they are killing innocent people.”