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Isis bride Shamima Begum says she is 'bored' of Brexit

'It’s so boring now that I ask the sisters to flick on to the cartoon channel just to get away from it,' she says from Syrian refugee camp

Colin Drury
Tuesday 02 April 2019 17:24 BST
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Jeremy Hunt says British officials didn't rescue Shamima Begum's baby because it was too dangerous

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She is living in a tent in a Syrian refugee camp, blocked from returning to the UK – but even Isis bride Shamima Begum says she is getting bored of Brexit.

The 19-year-old has revealed that Britain’s departure from the EU dominates television coverage at the al-Hol desert camp, where she is living.

“It goes on and on without end,” she told The Times. “It’s so boring now that I ask the sisters to flick on to the cartoon channel just to get away from it.”

In the same interview – the first since her third baby died last month – Ms Begum said she had accepted she may never return to the UK but said that she only ran away to join Isis after being “brainwashed” online.

She said she left London for Syria in 2015 because she believed “everything that I had been told, while knowing little about the truths of my religion”.

She married Dutch fighter Yago Riedijk after arriving in the caliphate, and the pair had two previous children, who also both died. They finally fled Isis territory as its last bastion in Baghuz crumbled earlier this year.

Ms Begum, who has Bangladeshi heritage, has since been stripped of her British citizenship by home secretary Sajid Javid.

Her family plans to appeal the decision and is to apply for a judicial review.

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