ISIS bride Shamima Begum has once again begged to come back to the UK so she can get therapy. The former British schoolgirl said her mental health is suffering since losing three babies in five months after leaving the UK to join the terror group. Speaking from a Syrian camp, the jihadi poster girl said […]
ISIS bride Shamima Begum has once again begged to come back to the UK so she can get therapy.
The former British schoolgirl said her mental health is suffering since losing three babies in five months after leaving the UK to join the terror group.
Speaking from a Syrian camp, the jihadi poster girl said she would rather be in a British jail so she could access education and psychiatric help.
“Mentally I am in a really bad way. I need therapy to deal with my grief. It is so hard. I have lost all my children,” she told the Daily Mail.
“I have no real friends. I have lost all the friends who came with me. Now I do not have anyone.
“I would like to be at home. There is more safety in a British prison, more education and access to family.”
Begum asked to return to the UK so she could face trial in her own country.
She said she feels as though she is already being punished for living in a warzone – despite deciding to travel there in 2015.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid has stripped Begum of her British citizenship because of public safety fears and she now lives in a camp near the Iraqi border.
Begum has hired a human rights lawyer whose former clients include hate preacher Abu Qatada.
Her case is now the subject of two appeals challenging the home secretary’s revocation of her citizenship, and the legal fight over her status is expected to last months or years.
Begum, who went to school in Bethnal Green, left London in 2015 along with two friends to join ISIS.
She was found in a Syrian refugee camp in mid-February at the age of 19 after fleeing battle-scarred Baghuz.
At the time she had a baby son, Jarrah, but she was only at the camp for a week before he fell ill.
She had woken in her tent on March 7 to find Jarrah suffering with serious breathing problems and his skin turning blue.
The pair were both taken from the camp to a nearby hospital, where the tot was put on a drip and given oxygen.
He died hours later and his young mum reportedly stayed alone on a bed in a hospital room with her dead baby until dawn.
However, when she returned to the camp the baby was taken away and buried outside of the perimeter wires that surround the camp.
“There was not an imam there, but some people who work outside the gates they prayed over him,” she said.
It was the third child she had lost since her first son died in November aged eight months and her one-year-old daughter died in January.
Both died of malnutrition and disease.
One of the camp’s guards told Times reporter Anthony Loyd “she never shed a tear” as Jarrah was buried without ceremony.
Despite her dark past, the Londoner says she now regrets everything she has done and has begged to be allowed back to the UK to start her life over.
“Since I left Baghuz I really regretted everything I did, and I feel like I want to go back to the UK for a second chance to start my life over again,” she said.
“I was brainwashed. I came here believing everything that I had been told, while knowing little about the truths of my religion.”
Begum’s jihadi husband earlier told of their “nightmare” after their third baby died in a Syrian refugee camp.
ISIS fighter Yago Riedijk, 27, currently detained in a Kurdish-run camp in Syria, described Begum as “the perfect wife” and said they are heartbroken over the deaths.
He said: “Me and her, we loved them so much it’s a nightmare.
“It’s the worst thing that could ever happen. She’s just alone, heartbroken, having lost three children.”
