The account of the unrepentant ISIS warrior returned to Kosovo and wants to go back to Syria

The journey that led Fitim Ladrovci to become part of the war began in October 2013, when he was 23. He took his $350 savings, greeted his wife and left Obilic, writes the American prestige The Economist.

The Economist, who interviewed Ludrovci, describes his journey to Syria.

In Pristina, he left on his flight to Istanbul and left on another flight to Hatay, Turkey's southeast province. On the plane, he met an Arab dressed in black who drove him up to a one-story house with beds one on one. There he was surprised to meet six other Albanians.

Ladrovci showed that two of them were men, two were women whose men crossed the border with Syria months ago. Two were children; a two - year - old boy and a six - month - old girl, who kept crying.

The next day, Albanians were taken to the border and from there they walked several miles until they reached a bus line. They get into a minibus where they were joined by men from the Caucasus and, as Ludrovci describes, they were red beards that made them look like I play.

They passed through a region of sand until they arrived.

The place seemed beautiful but I was shaking all the time. What scared me the most was falling into the hands of Bashar al-Assad”, Ladrovci said.

He travelled hundreds of miles to fight Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. His sense of justice began at his young age, when Albanians turned against Serbia and with America's help, they created the state, writes The Economist.

Ladrovci says his role in Syria would be like Americans in Kosovo -- helping oppressed people.

In his early days in Syria, he says that many people gathered in one land.

The Arabs listed us as sardine”, he confessed.

Ladrovci joined the organisation “Al-Nusra”, which was a segment of “Al-Qaeda” created in 2012.

He handed over his savings as he was promised a monthly salary of 115 dollars.

Ladrovci was sent to Aleppo for training along with other men. It shows that he has been eating the same food three times a day.

Men could choose to hold courses for three months to become snipers or enter the tank division. The next option was the three-week course to join the ground forces and enter the occupied areas. Ludrovci had chosen the latter.

He says he had gone to help innocent people, but later he was confused about how his religion viewed what he was doing.

Ladrovci came to the conclusion that only one organisation answered his questions, and along with the other Albanian recruits joined the Islamic State (ISIS).

I fighter SIS assuredly spent a year on the battlefield, then he returned to Kosovo, where he was arrested for hate speech but not as a member of ISIS. Three years later he returned to Obilic.

Ludrovci's only regret is why he left Syria.

I'd go back there tomorrow, if I had the option”, Kosovar says.

The Economist's journalist describes the road to Obilic, where Ludrovci went to interview him.

The Albanian taxi driver had told him there was no one in Kosovo who had not lost anyone in the fight with Serbia.

You can't find someone in this country who hasn't lost someone. But we didn't remove heads of people”, he told them.

The journalist has met Ladrovci four times and talked to him for over 10 hours, which he says changed his condition.

Then he told me that he felt the need to come to my neck, and then he was careful enough to ask me about my mother's condition that he was sick, explains journalist Alexander Clap.

Ladrovci and his family had experienced horror during the Kosovo war. Serbs had tortured his brother, making him unable to walk, while they had fled from Drenica to Obilic at night.

I still have the feeling of the cold river when we crossed it while we were going to war”, the journalist was told Ladrovci.

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How was Ladrovci introduced to radical Islam?

By 2000, Wahhabi organizations had arrived in Kosovo. The Squirrel municipality was one of the centers where they operated. The girl named Mihane Balec was activated in them. In 2010 her cousin met her with Ludrovci, and they married after three months. At the time, the son from Obilic knew almost nothing about religion, but his wife was telling him religious clergymen on YouTube.

He had later begun online communication with other radicals, whom he called “brothers”.

After a while he began to meet in Pristina with a group of men with whom he shared his views on religion. In 2013 he told his wife that he was going to Syria for a better life for the latter.