Badass Chemistry Professor Hired Mercenaries to Rescue a College Student From an ISIS War Zone

By J.D. Simkins

Some educators genuinely care about their pupils. There are those who go out of their way to tutor, mentor, offer advice or even take personal interest in the struggles impacting their students' lives at home.

Then there’s Charlotta Turner, a professor of analytical chemistry at Sweden’s Lund University, who, upon learning that one of her doctoral students was in hiding in an Islamic State war zone, dispatched a heavily-armed mercenary squad to rescue the student and his family.

Firas Jumaah was completing a doctorate thesis under Turner in 2014 when he received a terrifying text message from his wife, who was home in northern Iraq with the couple’s two young children: ISIS fighters had captured an adjacent Yazidi village and were killing the men and enslaving the women.

“My wife was totally panicking," Jumaah told Lund’s University Magazine LUM. “I took the first plane there to be with them. What sort of life would I have if anything had happened to them there?”

After arriving in Iraq and reuniting with his panicked family, Jumaah packed up some of their belongings and moved them to a hideout in an abandoned bleach factory, Sweden’s The Local reported. All the while, the family could hear the sounds of ISIS gun fire getting closer with each passing day.

Amidst the chaos, Jumaah sent a text message to Turner to inform her that he likely wouldn’t be finishing his doctorate thesis.

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