‘She has no remorse’: Filmmaker who met ISIS bride Shamima Begum in Syrian refugee camp and at first felt sorry for her brands her ‘manipulative’ and a ‘narcissist’ who now ‘sees herself as a celebrity’
- Documentary maker Andrew Drury says Shamima Begum is playing ‘a victim’
- She has been in a Syrian refugee camp after joining the terrorist group in 2015
- Begum is fighting a decision by the UK Government to strip her of her citizenship
A filmmaker who met Shamima Begum in a Syrian refugee camp says the former-teen ISIS bride sees herself as a ‘celebrity’ after the recent media attention.
Documentary maker Andrew Drury, who has travelled to Syria to speak to the 23-year-old on several occasions, said Begum is a ‘narcissist’ who ‘sees herself as a victim’.
Begum, who is currently appealing a decision by the UK Government to strip her of her British citizenship, originally travelled to Syria to join ISIS when she was 15 years old.
Earlier this month the BBC sparked fury as it devoted a 10-episode podcast to the woman who is accused of sewing bombers into their suicide vests while living in ISIS-controlled territory in the Middle East.
Andrew Drury, pictured here with Shamima Begum in a Syrian refugee camp, says she is a ‘narcissist’
Begum, pictured here wearing leggings and a white t-shirt, has changed her appearance radically since she was first found in the Al-Roj camp in Syria
Mr Drury said he had initially been taken in by Begum when meeting her for the first time, adding that he had felt ‘sorry’ for her.
However, last week he he can see through the character she is playing for the cameras.
The Times quotes him as saying: ‘She sees herself as a victim now but she told me quite clearly it was her choice to go [to Syria] and she went of her own free will
‘She is a narcissist. She wants to be a somebody. Now she sees herself as a celebrity. Being part of Isis meant she was a somebody and now she’s a somebody again.’
In July last year Mr Drury said the UK has a responsibility to bring British jihadi brides like Begum and their children ‘back home’ because it was not fair to leave them ‘to be a danger to the Syrians and the Kurds’ who have ‘enough danger to deal with already’.
But he has since changed his view – in September he said he believed Begum was a ‘manipulative personality playing the victim card in an attempt to get back to the UK’.
He told the Sun at the time: ‘After extensive face-to-face meetings and a slew of bizarre text messages, I am convinced she is a bitter, twisted character with deep psychological problems.’
Mr Drury said that he was ‘floored’ when she told him that the death of her three children no longer makes her sad, and that she had ‘moved on’.
This, he said, began to change his view that Begum is a victim.
Mr Drury, who has written a book about his experiences of travelling abroad for work called Trip Hazard, said she made no mention of being ‘trafficked or groomed’ when he first met her.
He claims she is trying to ‘create a character’ that she can use to get back to the UK.
Whether she is let back into Britain will depend on the decision of a Special Immigration Appeals Commission, which is looking into her claims she was unfairly stripped of her citizenship.
Begum claims she was a victim of trafficking, after she and two friends travelled to Syria when she was 15 with the help of a spy working for Canadian intelligence.
The ISIS bride gave birth to three children after joining ISIS, none of whom have survived. Pictured: Begum with her week-old son Jerah
While in Syria she was married to Yago Rieddijk, a Dutch Muslim convert who was eight years older than her.
Four years later she was found living in a Syrian refugee camp, pregnant with her third child – her first two had died of malnutrition-related illnesses and her third would also perish soon after birth.
It was claimed that Begum had acted as an enforcer for ISIS’s strict sharia lifestyle and had even sewn vests to suicide bombers before their attacks – she denies this.
In her first interview after she was found, she sparked outrage after she claimed seeing ‘my first severed head in a bin didn’t faze me at all’.
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Days later the then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid stripped Begum of her citizenship, sparking a court battle from her supporters.
The Home Office says Begum knew what she was walking into when she joined ISIS, but her lawyers argue she was trafficked and sexually exploited.
Her family’s lawyer, Tasnime Akunjee told the times: ‘The court of public opinion is not part of my jurisdiction.
‘If she was trafficked within the terms of the Modern Slavery Act and the home secretary did not have this in mind, was the decision to strip her of her citizenship valid?’
A Home Office spokesman said: ‘The government’s priority remains maintaining the safety and security of the UK. It would be inappropriate to comment further whilst legal proceedings are ongoing.’
The BBC sparked fury earlier this month after releasing a podcast series featuring Begum in which she defended her actions.
In the show, titled I’m Not A Monster, Begum said: ‘I have always been a more secluded person… I’m not a person that likes a lot of attention on me.’
In the series she described crossing the border into Syria as being ‘easy’ and talked about the journey she took with her school friends Amira Abase, also 15, and Kadiza Sultana, 16.
It is understood that no money has been paid to her by the BBC for her participation in the series.
But critics claim the corporation should not be giving her the ‘oxygen’ of publicity amid concerns it will allow her to ‘spin’ a ‘sob story’ and use it as a PR opportunity.
Campaign group the TaxPayers’ Alliance said in a social media post that the BBC licence fee money ‘should not be supporting this disgraceful PR exercise to spin the sob story of an Isis bride’.
The BBC has said the series is ‘not a platform for Shamima Begum to give her unchallenged story’ but a ‘robust, public interest investigation’.
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