A Swedish-Iraqi student was rescued from an ISIS held town sometime in 2014 by mercenaries in four SUV’s hired by his thesis advisor and we’re only just hearing about it.
Comments are very worth reading...e.g. my thesis advisor wouldn't have known I was gone...I would have done it for one of my students, I would have driven the SUV...This message has been edited. Last edited by: sjtill,
_________________________ “Remember, remember the fifth of November!"
December 14, 2018, 12:36 AM
deepocean
Wow, thank you for posting this. Talk about making things happen. Someone is obviously going to make a movie about that.
December 14, 2018, 05:24 AM
BansheeOne
With the title "The Swedish Chemistrist".
quote:
Lund professor freed student from Islamic State war zone
The Local news@thelocal.se @thelocalsweden
13 December 2018 14:24 CET+01:00
A chemistry professor at Lund University dispatched a team of mercenaries into an Islamic State (also known as IS, Isis or Daesh) war zone to free one of her doctoral students and his family.
Charlotta Turner, professor in Analytical Chemistry, received a text message from her student Firas Jumaah in 2014 telling her to to assume he would not finish his thesis if he had not returned within a week.
He and his family were, he told her, hiding out in a disused bleach factory, with the sounds of gunshots from Isis warriors roaming the town reverberating around them. Jumaah, who is from Iraq, is a member of the ethno-religious group Yazidi hated by Isis.
"I had no hope then at all," Jumaah told Lund's University Magazine LUM. "I was desperate. I just wanted to tell my supervisor what was happening. I had no idea that a professor would be able to do anything for us."
Jumaah had voluntarily entered the war zone after his wife had rung him to say that Isis fighters had taken over the next-door village, killing all the men and taking the women into slavery.
"My wife was totally panicking. Everyone was shocked at how IS were behaving," he said. "I took the first plane there to be with them. What sort of life would I have if anything had happened to them there?"
But Turner was not willing to leave her student to die without trying to do something.
"What was happening was completely unacceptable," she told LUM. "I got so angry that IS was pushing itself into our world, exposing my doctoral student and his family to this, and disrupting the research."
She contacted the university's then security chief Per Gustafson.
"It was almost as if he'd been waiting for this kind of mission," Turner said. "Per Gustafson said that we had a transport and security deal which stretched over the whole world."
Over a few days of intense activity, Gustafson hired a security company which then arranged the rescue operation.
A few days later two Landcruisers carrying four heavily-armed mercenaries roared into the area where Jumaah was hiding, and sped him away to Erbil Airport together with his wife and two small children.
I have the heart of a lion.......and a lifetime ban from the Toronto Zoo.- Unknown
December 14, 2018, 06:41 AM
pwelch001
Outstanding
December 14, 2018, 07:19 AM
sigfreund
Good story, but it was actually her student: It was a woman professor who started the action to get the student and his family rescued.
Plus, I am really surprised that a Swedish university security chief would even know where to start to mount an operation like that. I would expect that if an American university official had proposed rescuing someone like that it would have been, “What! You want to hire people with guns and stuff‽ You’re fired! We’ll send the fighters a strongly worded note to stop and let our student go.”
► 6.0/94.0
I can tell at sight a Chassepot rifle from a javelin.
December 14, 2018, 10:05 AM
Otto Pilot
I wonder how big a sum the family has had to pay back to the university for the rescue. Money well spent, but I'm just curious. I wonder if there's a grant to cover that sort of thing. LOL
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December 14, 2018, 10:47 AM
Aeteocles
The school probably had an insurance policy for for their employees (doctoral students are typically employed by the university while they work on their thesis). The article indicated that the head of security reached out to the schools already established contacts (for example, a security consultant retained by the insurance company). The school may have then hired the security contractors (mercs) directly (the insurance company not wanting to assume additional liability for directly hiring the contractors), and then the school submitted the bill for reimbursement to the insurance company.
From the article, it sounds like the student is nearly paying off the debt to the school, which is likely just the deductible portion that the school was liable for. This makes sense, as a paying for the rescue opp in full would take many years as a chemist straight out of school--paying down the deductible would be more doable this soon.
I've purchased rescue insurance in the past for myself when I traveled, so I know that stuff exists.
December 14, 2018, 11:29 AM
sjtill
BansheeOne, recht schön Dank für Ihre Meldung!
And yes, it was HER student, SigFreund, I will correct title.
_________________________ “Remember, remember the fifth of November!"
December 14, 2018, 11:44 AM
jsbcody
Great for the professor......but the school that has a badass Security Chief that can arrange a mercenary rescue across the world....WOW!!!!!!
December 14, 2018, 12:21 PM
LDD
That sounds like a story worth making into a movie.
My own experience, in terms of my capstone paper adviser, was quite different.
December 14, 2018, 12:51 PM
jsbcody
quote:
Originally posted by LDD: That sounds like a story worth making into a movie.
My own experience, in terms of my capstone paper adviser, was quite different.
The Substitute: Norway Mission
December 14, 2018, 02:59 PM
ftttu
It is a nice story on its face.
Still, I want these fighting-aged males to shed their own blood to direct the course of their country. I don't won't to get into what Merkel and the rest of the West has done to speed up the end of Christianity in this thread.
Retired Texas Lawman
December 14, 2018, 03:54 PM
Lord Vaalic
quote:
Everyone was shocked at how IS were behaving,"
Yeah... your a Dr. student and you are this naïve?
Don't weep for the stupid, or you will be crying all day
December 15, 2018, 06:41 AM
BansheeOne
This was in 2014 during the territorial conquest of Northern Iraq by ISIL, resulting in them proclaiming the Islamic State. Previously they had mostly perpetrated bomb/shooting attacks against Iraqi government and Shi'a targets, kidnapped foreigners etc. I don't think anybody was mistaken about their violent intentions, but the blanket atrocities against residents of different faiths, with mass killing and raping, slavery etc. really only began after they had secured the urban centers and began to set up their organized reign of terror.
The Yazidis were a particular target since both Muslims and Christians have often equated the most senior of the seven angels they believe to rule the world with Lucifer, considering them devil worshippers; so even by local standards the IS went pretty much medieval on them. Also they tended to live in separate and remote communities and probably thought they had nothing to do with the Sunni-Shi'a inter-Muslim, anti-government strife in the country; and of course the husband was actually away studying in Sweden. I imagine that, say, a black American post-grad working overseas, even if he was aware that there was a new brutal Civil War on back home, would still be rather shocked to learn from his family that rather than just fighting over the idea of government, one party had also started to re-implement slavery in all its consequence over in the next town.
Also seriously, somebody page Dolph Lundgren. This should push all his buttons, even if he got his own chemistry degree from a different university.
