Joyce Snyman clutched an image of her son’s driver’s licence, holding back her tears.
The 70-year-old Durban mother wanted to know whether her son, a suspected local Islamic State fighter, was dead, murdered or had disappeared?
If the news updates on social media are to be believed, her 44-year-old son, Aqeel Abdul-Haq Kloberie, was allegedly an Isis terrorist, killed a few days ago in Iraq in a blast.
Kloberie had converted from Christianity to Islam in 1991, soon after leaving Bechet High School in Sydenham.
A post on Twitter, by @IraqLiveUpdate, showed an image of a South African-marked driver’s licence bearing the details of an AA Kloberie being held by a man. The text accompanying the image read: “Dead Daesh terrorist held South African driver’s licence! #SouthAfrica joins the club..#Iraq”.
Another site, @TerrorMonitor wrote: “A #PMU Fighter Displays A Seized #SouthAfrican Driver Licence Recovered From A Killed #ISIS Militant”. PMU refers to the Shia Popular Mobilisation Units fighting against IS. Daesh is another reference to IS.
Snyman had been waiting eagerly at her phone for months to hear from her “introverted” son, who left South Africa for Bahrain in March this year.
“He was only supposed to go for three weeks on a contract job. He’s been around the world to Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Russia. He works in the oil refineries underground, and had recently finished working at Eskom at the Medupi plant.
“The last I heard from him was in June this year. We talked about normal things, about his family and his young children, and he sounded fine. We speak often, and usually if he doesn’t call me after a week or so, I call him. But I’ve tried his number since June and I can’t get hold of him.”
It was her tech-savvy grandson who alerted her to the Twitter post on Thursday evening.
“It was a shock when we saw this. That is my son’s picture in the licence. You can tell how he doesn’t like his picture taken. But all we know is that his licence was found on a body, but we don’t know if the body is his. It could be anyone.
