With his blue eyes, brown hair and beaming smile, young Michael Delefortrie looked every inch the angelic altar boy.
But fast forward twenty years, and Michael had changed his name to Younnes, traded his Christian faith for Islam, and the sleepy Belgian suburb he’d grown up in for the front lines of ISIS’ war in Syria.
Now, back in Belgium, he still expresses open support for the group’s warped ideology and says he wishes he could return to the group’s self-proclaimed Islamic State.
“I regret coming back,” he told me. “I want to live under the caliphate.”
Despite his shocking words, the most striking thing about the 28-year-old is how utterly unremarkable he appears. The first time we meet, in a café in the port city of Antwerp, he wears a hooded sweatshirt, sneakers and jeans (cuffed just above the ankle in a style that emulates the Prophet — though most people wouldn’t even notice).
He doesn’t shake hands with me, as a woman, but he is polite, makes eye contact, apologizes for being late, cracks jokes and even flirts a little with my young producer.
And while he dismisses his own nationality — “I’m not Belgian. I am Muslim” — and wants to see Western democracy replaced by the strictest form of Sharia law, the returned ISIS fighter is more than happy to accept welfare checks from the Belgian government.
