‘Can I come home, pretty please?… I would love to help others’: New look jihadi bride Shamima Begum says she was a ‘dumb kid’ when she fled to Syria aged 15 – but insists she doesn’t need to be rehabilitated
- Shamima Begum, 21, has insisted that she does not need to be rehabilitated
- Former East London schoolgirl speaking during interview at al-Roj prison camp
- Begum, who left Britain to join IS in 2015, remains stripped of her citizenship
Wearing a leather Nike baseball cap and skinny jeans, jihadi bride Shamima Begum has insisted she does not need to be rehabilitated.
In fact she would ‘love’ to help rehabilitate others, she said.
The 21-year-old former East London schoolgirl was speaking during an interview at al-Roj prison camp in Syria, again showing off her slick new western image seen in other recent encounters with the media.
With fingernails painted red as she held a fashionable clutch bag, she now looks very different from her previous image as a jihadi bride in hijab and head scarf, inset below.
Shamima Begum, 21, has insisted she does not need to be rehabilitated during an interview at al-Roj prison camp in Syria
The former East London schoolgirl left Britain to join Islamic State when she was 15 in 2015
The 21-year-old (pictured with journalist Andrew Drury) remains in the camp stripped of her UK citizenship
Begum, who left Britain to join Islamic State when she was 15 in 2015, remains in the camp stripped of her UK citizenship.
In her latest interview there, she told journalist Andrew Drury: ‘I don’t think I was a terrorist. I think I was just a dumb kid who made one mistake.
‘I personally don’t think that I need to be rehabilitated, but I would want to help other people be rehabilitated. I would love to help.’
Explaining why she had stopped wearing her traditional Islamic dress, she said: ‘I wear these clothes, and I don’t wear a hijab, because it makes me happy. And anything in this camp that makes me happy is like a lifesaver.’
She added that she liked rapper Kanye West’s music, was following news of his divorce from reality TV star Kim Kardashian and watched re-runs of Friends in the camp.
After running away from her home in Bethnal Green with two other schoolgirls to go to Syria, Begum married a Dutch jihadi.
She had three children who all died of disease or malnutrition before she arrived at al-Roj. Her husband is thought to be in a Kurdish-run prison in Syria.
As recently as 2019, Begum refused to condemn the Manchester arena bombing in which 22 were murdered.
And in another interview she said that seeing her first severed head in Syria ‘didn’t faze me at all’.
But Mr Drury, interviewing her for a film called Danger Zone, said meeting her had changed his mind about her being a terrorist and that she should be allowed to return to the UK and serve time for her crimes.
Begum now looks very different from her previous image as a jihadi bride in a hijab and head scarf
Begum was 15 when she ran away with two other schoolgirls – Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Amira Abase, 15 – (all pictured at Gatwick airport) to Syria to marry a Dutch jihadi in 2015
But Mr Drury, interviewing her for a film called Danger Zone, said meeting her had changed his mind about her being a terrorist and that she should be allowed to return to the UK and serve time for her crimes.
Earlier this year the Supreme Court ruled on national security grounds that she cannot return to Britain to appeal against the removal of her citizenship in 2019.
At the end of the interview, Mr Drury, a married father-of-four, shared an embrace with Begum after she asked him for a hug.
Shamima Begum (pictured) claimed she joined the Islamic State because she didn’t want to be the ‘friend that was left behind’ in a documentary about her life in a Syrian refugee camp
‘We were about to say goodbye and I didn’t know the protocol because bear in mind she is there as a terrorist,’ he said. ‘I went to shake her hand and she started to cry and said to me, ‘Can I have a hug?’
He added: ‘This girl is a vulnerable 21-year-old who did something unbelievably stupid. It was a childish mistake from a 15-year-old.’
Asked what she would say to those in the UK who do not want her to return, Begum said: ‘Can I come home please, pretty please?’
Shamima Begum claims she only left UK to join ISIS in Syria because ‘she didn’t want to be left behind’ and says she only supported the fanatics because she was ‘naive’
By Kate Dennett for MailOnline
Shamima Begum has claimed she only left the UK to join ISIS in Syria because she ‘didn’t want to be left behind’ as her other friends decided to travel.
The former Isis child bride, 21, said she joined her Bethnal Green classmates, Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana, in fleeing the UK because she was ‘young and naive’ and wanted to help people in war-torn Syria.
Ms Begym, who left the UK aged 15 in 2015, claimed in an emotional interview she joined the Islamic State because she didn’t want to be the ‘friend that was left behind’ in a documentary about her life in a Syrian refugee camp.
Ms Begum, from Bethnal Green in East London, said she and her friends were recruited online by Isis supporters to be a ‘part of something’, adding that recruiters preyed on the guilt they felt at seeing Muslims suffer in the Syrian conflict
Shamima Begum (pictured) claimed in an interview she joined the Islamic State because she didn’t want to be the ‘friend that was left behind’
Speaking on the documentary The Return: Life After Isis, Ms Begum revealed how she made the decision to travel to Syria. She said: ‘I knew it was a big decision, but I just felt compelled to do it quickly.
‘I didn’t want to be the friend that was left behind.’
In the documentary she cried when talking about losing her three children during the Syrian war and says that she wanted to kill herself because of the grief.
Speaking about the death of her daughter, Begum said: ‘When she died it was so hard because I just felt so alone and I felt like my entire world was falling apart in front of me and I couldn’t do anything.
‘When she [her daughter] died at that moment I just wanted to kill myself. I felt like I couldn’t even get up to run any more when there were bombings.
‘The only thing keeping me alive was my baby I was pregnant with. I felt like I had to do him right by getting him out and giving him a normal life.’
She said she did not understand why her babies died, adding: ‘I felt like it was my fault for not getting them out sooner even though I didn’t know why they died.’
She previously told reporters her children died of malnutrition and disease.
Some of the other women in the camp were pictured with Begum inside the camp
Her third child, a boy, died in March 2019 just a month after he was born, because of pneumonia.
Ms Begum is currently being held at the al-Roj camp in northern Syria, after she had her British citizenship stripped by the Government, which in turn sparked an ongoing legal battle.
Around 800 families live in the al-Roj camp, close to the borders with Turkey and Iran and much-preferred to the infamous al-Hol centre 80 miles away and home to 15,000 families.
In the 90-minute film, Ms Begum accused the Government of fabricating stories about her commitment to radical Islam when her citizenship was removed, claiming she was too scared to condemn Isis out of fears for her safety in the camp.
She also revealed the heartbreak of having to tell the parents of her friends Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana that the two girls had been killed in the city of Baghuz.
Ms Begum, from East London, said Isis recruiters preyed on the guilt they felt at seeing Muslims suffer in the Syrian conflict. Pictured: Camp Roj in Syria where Ms Begum is held
Begum was 15 when she ran away with two other schoolgirls – Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Amira Abase, 15 – (all pictured at Gatwick airport) to Syria to marry a Dutch jihadi in 2015
Ms Begum is currently being held at the al-Roj camp in northern Syria (pictured), after she had her British citizenship stripped by the Government, which sparked an ongoing legal battle
Tearfully recounting her story, she said: ‘Now I feel like I have no friends anymore, they were everything I had.’
It comes after Ms Begum revealed the wanted to kill herself when her three children died in Syria and begged Britain to give her a ‘second chance’.
Begum said that she hoped British people would have an ‘open mind about why I left and who I am now as a person’ and urged the government to allow her to return home.
Begum says people wrongly ‘feel like I’m responsible’ for the crimes of ISIS but she now realises she was ‘naive’ and rejects its beliefs.
She said: ‘They just think I knew about these crimes and I supported these crimes but that’s not true.
‘I would never support something like this, like the things they did.’
When Begum was tracked down for the first time in 2019 after fleeing the UK, she was pregnant, widowed and had lost two children.
Her third died shortly after birth and in the film Begum cried as she spoke about losing all of her babies.
She is one of several British women stranded in Roj camp after having their citizenship revoked.
Begum was 15 when she ran away with two other schoolgirls to Syria to marry a Dutch jihadi in 2015.
In February, the UK’s Supreme Court ruled that she cannot return to the UK to pursue an appeal against the removal of her British citizenship.
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