The man spotted at the Balie debating centre in Amsterdam last month and accused of being a former IS fighter by Syrian activists has told the Volkskrant he has never been part of the Islamic militant group.

The man, a 31-year-old Syrian national who had been allegedly fighting alongside IS forces in Syria, was spotted watching a film about the Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently collective by activists from the group.

Dutch security service sources then told the paper that the man is ‘a serious case’ who travelled to the Netherlands under a false name and is being monitored by the AIVD. They were aware of his presence before the Balie debate, the paper said.

But the man, named by the paper as Aziz and who goes under a different name in the Netherlands, told the Volkskrant he had never had anything to do with IS.

Despite calls for him to picked up and jailed immediately, prime minister Mark Rutte said at the time that he understood people were shocked but that he could not comment further on the case out of security considerations. And justice minister Ferdinand Grapperhuis said the man could only be arrested if there were ‘sufficient legal grounds’.

Book club

Aziz told the Volkskrant and current affairs show Nieuwsuur he had been arrested with 11 other members of a book club who ‘read banned books about Syria and the regime, about shiite and sunni Muslims’ in 2005.

‘That is why I and the other members were arrested,’ he said.

He said he was released via an amnesty in 2011 and made plans to leave Syria. He  left for Turkey in 2012. In 2014, he ended up in the Netherlands where he went to the Ter Apel refugee centre and was given a permanent residency permit. He now works in a café in Amsterdam.

Prison

‘My problem is, I think, that I was in the Saydnaya prison,’ he told the Volkskrant. ‘I can’t change that.’ Hundreds of IS prisoners have been kept at the jail and he admitting having former friends who were there and who have joined IS.

The man said he welcomed the fact he is being monitored by the Dutch security services. ‘I have nothing to hide. I am happy they keep an eye on me. If they have something against me, they know where to find me.’

The Volkskrant and Nieuwsuur said they had done all they could to verify the man’s story.