Roger Waters performs the Dark Side of the Moon and other Pink Floyd Classics at the North Harbour Stadium, Auckland. Photo / Richard Robinson
Roger Waters performs the Dark Side of the Moon and other Pink Floyd Classics at the North Harbour Stadium, Auckland. Photo / Richard Robinson
Former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters has used his private jet to help reunite the children of a dead Isis fighter with their mother.
Waters flew the woman from the Caribbean to the Iraqi border with Syria, where she crossed with a British human rights lawyer.
Felicia Perkins-Ferreira had notseen her sons, Ayyub Ferreira, 7, and Mahmud, 11, since they were taken by their father to Syria to live in the so-called caliphate in 2014. She has had only intermittent contact with them since. The father, Abebe Oboi Ferreira, from Trinidad and Tobago, is thought to have died fighting in Raqqa some time in 2017.
The boys were abandoned at the roadside by their father's new Belgian wife. They were picked up by Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a group that has fought Isis (Islamic State) alongside the United States-led coalition.
The boys spent the past few months in a camp for families of Isis fighters in northern Syria.
"I'm really, really grateful and I wish I could meet them all and embrace them," Perkins-Ferreira said of the people who helped her.
Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of the charity Reprieve, suggested the idea to Waters, a friend, who said he would cover the costs of a reunion.
Stafford Smith previously helped co-ordinate the release of Samantha Elhassani, an American woman who claimed she was tricked by her husband into travelling to Isis-held territory, and her four children.
Waters had pleaded with the Government of Trinidad and Tobago to issue new passports for the boys.
Stafford Smith said that once the boys were out of Syria, "we're going to make sure that they get on with a really productive, decent life".
