A stricken single mum who says her cheating partner drained her bank account before threatening to release a sex tape if she want to police has warned: "He is a danger to women".
Distraught Mary Heath was convinced that Kurdish-born partner Hersh Abdullah Saleh was in love with her, but claims he fleeced her for thousands of pounds to fund fighters in his homeland.
Saleh admitted assaulting Mary, 36, and an Edinburgh sheriff, and has now been ordered to stay away from her, the Daily Record reports.
The heartbroken mother has said she confronted him after discovering filthy messages which he had sent other women.
She is now suffering from PTSD and depression following the attack.
Mary claims Saleh, who lives in Blackpool, bragged of his involvement with Iraqi Kurdistan’s Peshmerga military and alleges he sent money to help them.
It is understood police found evidence money had been sent to Kurdistan but could not identify who the money had been sent to.
The Daily Record has seen evidence in bank statements that shows £20,000 coming out of Mary’s account in a short period of time.
Saleh has failed to respond to requests from the Daily Record to give his side of the story.
Mum-of-two Mary said she first gave fast food shop worker Saleh £5000 for medical treatment for his mother, who he said was dying from cancer.
And she alleges he then took advantage of her vulnerability to take much more.
She said: “I was in a dark place with my PTSD, from childhood issues, and he took advantage of that.
“I came into some money, quite a lot actually, and within 10 weeks it was all gone. All I have to show for it is an XBox for my son.
“He would say he was going to the shops for cigarettes and withdraw the maximum from the cash machine. He was using my mobile phone and from the bank app, he sent money to his cousin’s girlfriend in Kurdistan.
'I believe that money was used to fund fighting groups. He would brag about it all the time. He claimed he was in the UK because it wasn’t safe in his own country with the different terror groups.
"He said it was safer for him over here and so he was claiming political asylum. But he regularly bragged that his brother is high up in Peshmerga.
“He told me he was here on an Iranian passport but I tracked down a cousin of his who confirmed he was born in Ranya in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. I’ve written to the Home Office asking them to investigate his status.”
Peshmerga is a legitimate military force in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Because the Iraqi army are forbidden from entering the Kurdish areas, Peshmerga fighters are responsible for security in the region.
They played a key role in the capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and actively hunt down Isis operatives.
They are partly funded by the US and in 2004, intelligence gathered by Peshmerga helped to capture Osama Bin Laden.
Mary added: “For someone who claims he can’t return to his own country for fear of being executed perhaps he can explain to the authorities why he was back there in 2013 – of which I have date-stamped video proof?”
Mary said she met Saleh in a nightclub in St Helens, Merseyside ,in 2015 and from there the pair began a long-distance romance.
She said: “At first it was lovely and he seemed a really nice person but then he became controlling and bullying.”
She claims he was a “control freak” who played mind games with her and used her illness to his advantage.
She added: “I gave him over £5000 mistakenly believing his mum had cancer.
“He even showed me a photo of her looking ill but she didn’t have cancer. It was a hernia operation she’d had.
“I tracked down one of his cousins, who told me his mum had bought him Iranian papers to come over here with. Hersh told me himself the date of birth on the papers is made up.”
Mary said Saleh reacted furiously when she discovered filthy messages he had been sending to other women.
She added: “When I confronted him, he realised he’d been caught out and there was no going back. He beat me up and smashed my house up.
“He went down south in my car, which he still has. I’ve begged the police to get my car back and my money but they only charged him with assault. He should have been done for fraud and theft too.”
It’s understood several other women have gone to police across the UK with complaints against Saleh.
Mary added: “I want the police to charge him and his friend with threatening to release a sex tape of me online. I have the messages.
“He’s a danger to women and I want everyone to know what he is.
“How can he claim asylum but then go back and have pictures all over social media of him in the country he’s supposedly too frightened to be in?
“It’s disgusting. He’s ripped me off and left me with nothing.”
A Home Office spokesman said they could not comment on individual cases.