More than 120 Americans who were recruited to fight for ISIS are unaccounted for, according to a new report.
This week, the Soufran Center – a Washington-based security intelligence consultancy – released ‘Beyond the Caliphate: Foreign Fighters and the Threat of Returnees’.
In the report, the agency said that at least 5,600 citizens or residents from 33 countries have returned home, making up approximately 15 percent of ISIS’s fighters.
However, for the United States, of the 129 fighters who succeeded in leaving the country, only seven have returned home.
More than 120 Americans who were recruited to fight for ISIS are unaccounted for, according to a report released by the Soufran Center – a Washington-based security intelligence consultancy. American Alberto Renteria (pictured) is believed to still be alive
The report says of the 129 fighters who succeeded in leaving the country, only seven have returned home. Americans Zakia Nasrin (left) and Jaffrey Khan (right) are believed to be alive. The couple met online and married in 2014 before leaving Ohio for Syria
In 2015, the US government estimated that approximately one in five of the American fighters who fled to join ISIS were killed in war zones.
However, there are no exact numbers of how many were killed abroad or how many may have escaped into other – leaving the whereabouts of many unknown.
An FBI spokesperson told Fox News that 300 Americans have ‘traveled or attempted to travel to Syria and Iraq to participate in the conflict’ – including those have joined other armed groups, such as the US-backed People’s Protection Units, Peshmerga or Free Syrian Army.
‘While this number is lower in comparison to many of our international partners, we closely analyze and assess the influence groups like ISIS have on individuals located in the United States, who are inspired to commit acts of violence,’ the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson also said of the 300 US fighters, approximately 40 died after traveling to Iraq or Syria.
Among those still believed to be alive, but not named in the report, are Zakia Nasrin, Jaffrey Khan and Alberto Renteria.
Nasrin and Khan, both now 25, met online and married in 2014 before leaving Ohio for Syria. The last their families heard, the couple was working in a hospital in Raqqa and had a one-year-old daughter, reported NBC News.
Renteria, who is of Mexican descent, grew up in Gilroy, California. He was raised Catholic but became a devout Muslim before fleeing to Syria in March 2014, when he was 24, according to NBC News. His whereabouts since then are unclear.
An FBI spokesperson said that 300 Americans have ‘traveled or attempted to travel to Syria and Iraq to participate in the conflict’ – including those have joined other armed groups (Pictured, Kurdish soldiers from the Anti-Terrorism Units escort a blindfolded Indonesian man suspected of Islamic State membership, at a security center in Kobani, Syria)
The number of Americans is small compared to foreign neighbors. The European Union had 5,000 residents flock to ISIS while Jordan had 3,000 fighters (Pictured, a fighter from ISIS, armed with a knife and an automatic weapon, stands next to captured Syrian army soldiers)
Of the 5,000 residents of the European Union who flocked to Iraq and Syria, a quarter allegedly have returned home.
The countries with the highest number of foreign fighters included Jordan at 3,000 with around 50 returning home.
In France, 271 of 1,910 fighters have returned, and in Morocco, 198 have gone home out of 1,623.
‘America does not strip the citizenship of those who join ISIS, so we can’t prevent them from coming home,’ national security expert Ryan Mauro, from the Clarion Project, told Fox News.
‘A lot of these returning ISIS recruits are likely disillusioned with the caliphate, but we must not mistake disappointment with a rejection of jihadist thinking overall.’