British IS schoolgirl \'wants to return home\'

British IS schoolgirl 'wants to return home'

CCTV of Shamima Begum at Gatwick Airport in February 2015 Image copyright Met Police
Image caption Ms Begum was 15 when she left the UK in 2015

One of three schoolgirls who left east London in 2015 to join the Islamic State group says she has no regrets, but wants to return to the UK.

In an interview with the Times, Shamima Begum, now 19, talked about seeing "beheaded heads" in bins - but said that it "did not faze her".

Speaking from a camp in Syria, she said she was nine months pregnant and wanted to come home for the sake of her baby.

She said she'd had two other children who had both died.

She also described how one of her two school friends that had left the UK with her had died in a bombing. The fate of the third girl is unclear.

'It was like a normal life'

Bethnal Green Academy pupils Ms Begum and Amira Abase, were both 15, while Kadiza Sultana was 16, when they left the UK in February 2015.

They flew from Gatwick Airport to Turkey after telling their parents they were going out for the day. They later crossed the border into Syria.

After arriving in Raqqa, she stayed at a house with other newly arrived brides-to-be, she told the Times.

"I applied to marry an English-speaking fighter between 20 and 25 years old," she said.

Ten days later she married a 27-year-old Dutch man who had converted to Islam.

She has been with him since then, and the couple escaped from Baghuz - the group's last territory in eastern Syria - two weeks ago.

Her husband surrendered to a group of Syrian fighters as they left, and she is now one of 39,000 people in a camp in northern Syria.

Asked by Times journalist Anthony Loyd whether her experiences of living in the one-time IS stronghold of Raqqa had lived up to her aspirations, Ms Begum said: "Yes, it did. It was like a normal life. The life that they show on the propaganda videos - it's a normal life.

"Every now and then there are bombs and stuff. But other than that..."

"I'm not the same silly little 15-year-old schoolgirl who ran away from Bethnal Green four years ago," she told Mr Loyd.

"I don't regret coming here."

'I always thought we'd die together'

But Ms Begum said the "oppression" had come as a "shock" and said she felt the IS "caliphate" was at an end.

"I don't have high hopes. They are just getting smaller and smaller," she said. "And there is so much oppression and corruption going on that I don't really think they deserve victory."

She referred to her husband having been held in a prison where men were tortured.

Image copyright Met Police
Image caption Kadiza Sultana, Amira Abase and Shamima Begum (l-r) in photos issued by police

A lawyer for the family of Kadiza Sultana said in 2016 that she was believed to have been killed in a Russian air strike.

Ms Begum told the Times her friend had died in a bombing on a house where there was "some secret stuff going on" underground.

She added: "I never thought it would happen. At first I was in denial. Because I always thought if we got killed, we'd get killed together."

'Scared this baby is going to get sick'

Ms Begum said losing two children "came as a shock. It just came out of nowhere, it was so hard".

Her first child, a girl, died at the age of one year and nine months, and was buried in Baghuz a month ago.

Her second child - the first to die - died three months ago at the age of eight months, of an illness that was compounded by malnutrition, the Times reports.

She told the paper she took him to a hospital. "There were no drugs available, and not enough medical staff," she said.

As a result she said she was "really overprotective" of her unborn child.

"I'm scared that this baby is going to get sick in this camp," she said. "That's why I really want to get back to Britain because I know it will be taken care of - health-wise, at least."

She said she should be giving birth "any day now".

"I'll do anything required just to be able to come home and live quietly with my child."

IS has lost control of most of the territory it overran, including its strongholds of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.

However, fighting continues in north-eastern Syria, where the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) say they captured dozens of foreign fighters in recent weeks.