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Former ISIS bride Shamima Begum says she should be allowed to return to the UK to help tackle terrorism.
Begum infamously fled the UK with fellow teenagers Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana as a 15-year-old schoolgirl in February 2015 to join ISIS and is the only one of the three known to still be alive.
Now deprived of her British citizenship, the 22-year-old gave an interview from the al-Roj prison camp in Syria which aired on Dan Wootton Tonight on GB News.
Asked by journalist Andrew Drury if she would tell her story to the government, she said: ‘Of course, yeah, I actually think it’s important that they know so they can prevent it in future for other people.
‘The fight against terrorism is not a one man job, it’s multiple people with multiple skills.’
Asked if she had the tools to stop kids believing in terrorism, she insisted: ‘I do.’
Begum said: ‘The fight against terrorism is not a one man job, it’s multiple people with multiple skills.’
Begum, who has resided at the prison camp since 2019, also said she was ‘giving messages and not believed’.
On the subject of her family, she added: ‘If I give a message to my family I want it to be face to face not over the media, that’s very private.
‘My family are very private people and I respect their privacy.’
Begum was stripped of her citizenship in 2019 by Sajid Javid and in February last year the Supreme Court ruled on national security grounds that she cannot return to Britain to pursue an appeal against the decision.
The east London schoolgirl dumped her veil a year ago and now straightens her dyed hair, paints her nails and wears make-up. She denies her image change is a publicity stunt.
Shamima Begum has told GB News she has the skills to help tackle terrorism in the UK
Last September she appeared on Good Morning Britain wearing a Nike baseball cap and a low-cut vest top instead of a niqab.
Begum has claimed that she is a victim of grooming by extremists, would now ‘rather die’ than rejoin ISIS and admitted she was wrong to say the Manchester Arena attack was ‘justified’ because of airstrikes that have killed civilians in Syria. She also said she had no idea ISIS was a ‘death cult’ when she joined.
She has claimed she was groomed by ISIS and her jihadi husband Yago Riedijk from the Netherlands, who she shared three children with who all died at a young age.
The schoolgirl fled London in February 2015 as a 15-year-old, travelling to Syria with two friends, Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana, to become a jihadi bride – but now claims she no longer supports ISIS and wants to return to the UK
She announced last November that she would be willing to face trial in Britain for the chance to come back. In an interview with Sky News, she repeated her denial of accusations that she carried out atrocities as part of IS, saying they are ‘all completely false’.
But, after being played the interview, Business minister Paul Scully was quick to slap down her plea. He told Sky News: ‘I think the Supreme Court has ruled on this matter. In terms of the actual case, what I don’t want to do is have it out via broadcast.
‘It has been heard by the Supreme Court after the Home Secretary made a really clear ruling.’
Last November, Shamima Begum said she believes she will be killed in her prison camp and is ‘living in fear constantly’ as she continues her fight to return to Britain
In her most recent interview, she added she and her Dutch friend Hafida Haddouch are being targeted by arsonists in the Al Roj camp (pictured) in Syria because they are seen as more Westernised than their campmates
A body language expert who analysed footage of Begum’s interviews after fleeing IS as part of a Discovery Channel documentary last month, claimed that she was ‘faking’ her emotional response on being told she had lost her citizenship.
The discovery+ programme, Shamima Begum: A Faking It Special, which aired in December, examined in forensic detail the schoolgirl-turned-terrorist’s reaction to the news in 2019 that she would be stripped of her UK citizenship by the British Government.
Body language expert Dr Cliff Lansley claimed on the show that the 22-year-old’s body language when she read out the letter from the Home Secretary that stated she was being stripped of her citizenship suggests that she was still loyal to ISIS at the time despite projecting pity at the news.
In the sequence, she is heard saying: ‘I’m just a 19-year-old girl with a new-born baby, I don’t have any weapons, I don’t want to hurt anyone.’
However, Dr Lansley argued that Begum was simply exercising ‘image management’.
He explained: ‘She’s building an image that she’s harmless. But just before she starts with that little advertisement about herself, we get two contradictory body language signals.’
ISIS bride Begum on claims she aided terrorists, the decision to revoke her citizenship and being a victim herself
Shamima Begum was 15 when she ran away with two other schoolgirls to Syria to marry a Dutch jihadi in 2015. She is accused of trying to recruit others to join before she left – and doing evil jobs for ISIS
On claims she sewed jihadis into suicide vests
‘I am willing to go to court and face the people who made these claims and refute these claims, because I know I did nothing in IS (so-called Islamic State) but be a mother and a wife.
‘These claims are being made to make me look worse because the Government do not have anything on me. There is no evidence because nothing ever happened.’
On asking for forgiveness
‘I know it’s very hard for the British people to try and forgive me because they have lived in fear of IS and lost loved ones because of IS, but I also have lived in fear of IS and I also lost loved ones because of IS, so I can sympathise with them in that way.
‘I know it is very hard for them to forgive me but I say from the bottom of my heart that I am so sorry if I ever offended anyone by coming here, if I ever offended anyone by the things I said.’
Message for the PM
‘I think I could very much help you in your fight against terrorism because you clearly don’t know what you’re doing’.
She added: ‘I want them (the British public) to see me as an asset rather than a threat to them.’
On why she went to Syria
Begum said she came to Syria expecting simply to get married, have children and ‘live a pure, Islamic life’.
‘The reason I came to Syria was not for violent reasons.’ She added: ‘At the time I did not know it (so-called Islamic State) was a death cult, I thought it was an Islamic community I was joining. I was being fed a lot of information on the internet by people.’
On justifying the Manchester Arena bombing
She said: ‘I do not believe that one evil justifies another evil. I don’t think that women and children should be killed for other people’s motives and for other people’s agendas.’
‘I did not know about the Manchester bombing when I was asked. I did not know that people were killed, I did not know that women and children were hurt because of it.’
Begum said it was ‘not justifiable to kill innocent people in the name of religion’.
On whether she is a criminal or a terrorist
She said: ‘Honestly, the only crime I think I committed was being dumb enough to come to Isis, and even that can be refuted because I was 15 when I came, and you can’t, you know, judge a 15-year-old for making a mistake which he or she very quickly regretted making.
‘If you really think I did do this, why don’t you bring me back and put me on trial, and hear my side of the story.
‘If you if you honestly believe that, don’t you think I just have to go to jail for it.
‘The fact that you think I should rather rot here, instead of face trial… the democracy that you live in, says that everyone deserves a fair trial.’
On her new western look
Begum said she the decision to stop wearing the hijab was one she took for herself and denied that the move was a publicity stunt.
She said: ‘I have not been wearing hijab for maybe more than a year now. I took it off for myself, because I felt very constricted in the hijab, I felt like I was not myself.
‘And I feel like it makes me happy, to not wear the hijab. I’m not doing for anyone but myself.
‘I’ve had many opportunities to let people take pictures of me without my hijab on, but I did not.’
On the decision to revoke her citizenship
When asked what she would tell Sajid Javid, who was Home Secretary when Begum’s British citizenship was revoked, Begum said: ‘I understand why he took my citizenship away, that it’s his job to think about the interest of the UK before anything else.
‘What he saw on the media was not the true me. If he were to meet me himself, I’m pretty sure he would change his mind about my citizenship.’
Begum said she was groomed and taken advantage of, believing she would be entering an ‘Islamic paradise’.
She said: ‘People that I was speaking to online they just, they created this image for me over paradise, an Islamic paradise.
‘They pressured me very hard into coming. They made me feel bad for wanting to stay in the UK, for wanting to stay with my family who weren’t even practising at the time. And they took advantage of me because they knew that I was young.’
Source: Daily Mail
