An Italian foreign fighter calls for rehabilitation: “Al Sharaa gets it, but not me?”

He was just 17 when he decided to leave Switzerland and set off for Idlib, joining Jabhat al-Nusra, the militia led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, the current president of Syria. Now aged 24, Stefano Costantini recalls that for him it was never about fighting. “I can’t stand war. I was helping orphans. I went there solely for humanitarian reasons, to help in the fight against the regime,” he explains over the phone in a conversation with Il Foglio. He now lives in Loreto Aprutino, in the province of Pescara, and it is here that he has built a new life for himself, with a job, far from the war. Costantini recounts his past as an Italian foreign fighter, one of 130 who travelled to Syria after 2011, before being arrested in Turkey and ultimately convicted in Italy. Five years have passed since he was imprisoned, first in Rossano and then in Ferrara – “my cellmate was Cesare Battisti; I used to cut his hair and he used to cook for me”. He has served the five-year prison sentence imposed by the Court of L’Aquila under Article 270-bis of the Criminal Code for the offence of international terrorism, but is now asking the Italian justice system to have his record expunged. He wants to be fully rehabilitated, on the basis of the same criteria adopted by the international community with regard to his former leader, Abu Muhammad al Julani, the nom de guerre of Ahmed al Sharaa.

“I want to come out of this with a clean slate; I want the right to travel and visit my family – my wife and children – who live in Turkey.” “Impossible,” a judge told him last month. The Court of Assizes in Chieti has rejected the appeal to overturn the sentence. Costantini is challenging the decision by which, last February, the United Nations Security Council removed al-Nusra and all its subsequent names – including Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the group led by al-Sharaa – from the list of international terrorist organisations. Since then, one of the most wanted international terrorists – an Islamic extremist with a past in al-Qaeda and one of the most influential commanders of the opposition to the Syrian regime during the war – has changed the course of events for an entire country. The advance, which began in Idlib, in north-western Syria, ultimately forced the dictator Bashar al-Assad to flee, until, on 8 December 2024, al-Sharaa entered Damascus and became Syria’s interim president, bringing an end to a 14-year civil war which, according to UN estimates, had claimed 600,000 lives. From there, Julani’s surprising shift towards moderation took shape, leading to his subsequent international rehabilitation in the guise of al Sharaa. “He went to the White House, met Trump and Macron, and was received at international forums, including the NATO summit…”, recall Costantini’s lawyers. If Julani has been allowed to resume his identity as al Sharaa, with the blessing of the American president and the international community – Costantini reflects – then I, too, in my own small way, expect similar treatment. He has just one thought in his mind: “I want my travel ban to Turkey lifted; I want to be able to move about and go to my wife and children.”

For the judges in Chieti, however, the removal of a terrorist organisation from the United Nations list has no retroactive effect. It goes without saying that the fact that it is no longer classified as a terrorist organisation today does not automatically imply that Costantini was not a terrorist in the past, the court ruled. “A complex case,” commented the young man’s lawyer, who is contesting the sentence handed down five years ago and upheld by the Court of Cassation. “Yes, it’s true that when I was 16 I became interested in Islam online. But I’m not a terrorist. I set off to do good, for humanitarian reasons. I boarded a ship in Bari and arrived in Turkey, and from there I went to Idlib. I worked in the refugee camps, providing food and bringing toys. I never fought,” says Costantini. Numerous photos and videos show the young man between 2014 and 2021 delivering essential supplies to orphans in Idlib. “Almost all the friends I had died in the war because of the Russian and Assad bombings,” recalls Costantini. “I saw children under the rubble, barrel bombs, phosphorus bombs. All whilst the world remained silent. That’s why I left – because I wanted to help the Syrian people, who are still close to my heart today.”

According to the prosecution, however, the young fighter’s intentions were not entirely peaceful. A photograph shows Costantini brandishing a Kalashnikov whilst wearing camouflage. “But I’d only just arrived; I was 17,” he replies. Five different public prosecutors’ offices – Italian, Swiss, German, Turkish and American – investigated him, and in the end only the charge of international terrorism stood; the other two charges put forward by the prosecutors – propaganda and incitement to terrorism, and violence – were dropped due to lack of evidence. “Once I was arrested, the Digos in Pescara questioned me,” says the former foreign fighter. “They also asked me for information about HTS and Idlib; they wanted to know what was happening there. But I didn’t want to answer them. Why should I have helped them after they’d made me look like a terrorist in everyone’s eyes?” Now Costantini’s case – the only one of its kind so far – could set a precedent for all the other HTS foreign fighters who have returned home and wish to reintegrate into Western societies. A redemption that is difficult to achieve. Unless, of course, we are talking about Ahmed al Sharaa.