One of the three schoolgirls who left east London in 2015 to join the Islamic State group says she has no regrets about going but wants to return to the UK.
In an interview with the Times, Shamima Begum,19, talked about seeing “beheaded heads” in bins but it “did not faze her”. She is said to now be nine months pregnant and wanted to return home to have her baby. She has had two other children however they both have died.
Shamima Begum also said that one of her two school friends that she left with had died in a bombing and the fate of her other friend is unknown.
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Kadiza Sultana, Amira Abase and Shamima Begum (l-r)
Bethnal Green Academy pupils Ms Begum and Amira Abase were both 15, while Kadiza Sultana was 16, when they left the UK to join IS in February 2015. They flew from Gatwick Airport to Turkey after telling their parents they were going out for the day, they later crossed the border into Syria. After arriving in Raqqa she stayed in a house with other brides-to-be who had just arrived.
“I applied to marry an English-speaking fighter between 20 and 25 years old,” she said.
Ten days after arriving she married a 27-years-old Dutch man who had converted to Islam. She has been with him ever since two weeks ago the couple escaped from Baghuz and her husband surrendered to a group of Syrian fighters as they left and she is now in a refugee camp in northern Syria.
When asked by Times journalist Anthony Loyd whether her experiences of living in the one-time IS stronghold of Raqqa had lived up to her aspirations, Ms Begum said: “Yes, it did. It was like a normal life. The life that they show on the propaganda videos – it’s a normal life.
“Every now and then there are bombs and stuff. But other than that…”
She said that seeing her first “severed head” in a bin “didn’t faze me at all”.
“It was from a captured fighter seized on the battlefield, an enemy of Islam.
“I thought only of what he would have done to a Muslim woman if he had the chance,” she said.
“I’m not the same silly little 15-year-old schoolgirl who ran away from Bethnal Green four years ago,” she told Mr Loyd.
“I don’t regret coming here.”
She referred to her husband as being held in a prison where men where tortured. Kadiza Sultana was believed to have been killed in 2016 by a Russian air strike. Ms Begum told the Times that her friend died in a house where there was “some secret stuff going on” underground.
She added: “I never thought it would happen. At first I was in denial. Because I always thought if we got killed, we’d get killed together.”
Ms Begum said losing two children came as a shock, her first child died aged one year and nine months and was buried a month ago. Her second child was the first of the two to die, she died three months ago at the age of eight months due to an illness that was increased by malnutrition.
She told the paper she took him to a hospital. “There were no drugs available, and not enough medical staff,” she said.
Security minister Ben Wallace said he could not comment on her case for legal reasons but said any Britons who went to Syria to engage or support terrorist activities should be prepared to be questioned, investigated and potentially prosecuted if they came back to the UK.
Asked whether the government would be rushing to bring home people such as Ms Begum, he said: “I’m not putting at risk British people’s lives to go and look for terrorists or former terrorists in a failed state.”
Sir Peter Fahy, a retired senior police officer who led the Prevent terrorism prevention programme at the time the girls ran away, said if any of them returned to the UK the authorities would first detain them and investigate whether there was enough evidence to go through with a prosecution.
