Kurdish forces in Iraq have arrested a British student suspected of trying to join a radical Islamic guerrilla group linked to al-Qaeda, the London Timesnewspaper reports.
Mr Urslaan Khan (21), from near Middlesbrough, was picked up by a Kurdish security police patrol in northern Iraq in early November. He has been studying for a degree in Arabic Studies at Manchester University, the paper said.
"We have been interrogating him for a long time now and we believe he travelled to Iraq to join Ansar al-Islam," Kurdish forces' spokesman Saba Rhader Kerem told the
Times.
The United States has described Ansar al-Islam as its main "terrorist adversary" in postwar Iraq, and Washington has accused the group of having ties to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
"This is very distressing but we have been in touch with the British Foreign Office and they are doing the best they can," Mr Khan's mother told the
Times.
