Shamima Begum has said she only joined ISIS so as not to be “the friend that was left behind” when she and two pals went to Syria.
She told a new documentary that she was “young and naive” when she left the UK, in 2015, aged 15 and became an ISIS bride.
Begum, now 21, is being held at the al-Roj camp in northern Syria while a legal battle continues over her British citizenship that was taken away by the UK government.
She has told how she didn’t get on with her mother and along with her friends from Bethnal Green were taken advantage of online by ISIS supporters who played on their guilt at seeing Muslims suffer in the Syrian conflict.
“It was the holidays when I decided to leave with my friends,” she told the documentary The Return: Life After ISIS, that looks at the cases of several women.
"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.”
Begum told how the schoolgirls she travelled with, Mira Abase and Kadiza Sultana, had been killed in the city of Baghuz and she has also lost three children.
"Now I feel like I have no friends anymore, they were everything I had,” she said.
Begum has also claimed that when she was interviewed at the camp during the period when her British citizenship was removed, she had been scared to criticise ISIS due to fears over her own safety.
