Hoda Muthana: Isis bride says she is allowed to return to US despite government denials - ‘I’m not a threat to America’

'I was only 19 when I made my decision. And you know, people when they're young they make very big stupid mistakes'

Hoda Muthana, who left Alabama at the age of 19 to join the terror group Isis in Syria, said she is “not a threat to America” and wants to return to the US as her lawyer battles her case in court.

Speaking to CBS News in northern Syria, Ms Muthana claimed to be a US citizen, rejecting denials from Donald Trump’s administration, while noting the son she had with a now-deceased Isis fighter does not hold citizenship to any country.

“I was only 19 when I made my decision. And you know, people when they’re young they make very big stupid mistakes,” she said. “We’re still trying to win the case and hopefully we will.”

Ms Muthana has been held by Kurdish forces allied with the US since January, when she turned herself in amid the caliphate’s decline. A federal court in Washington was scheduled to review her case on Monday.

“I know I am an American citizen and I know I have the right to come back,” she continued. “I have no other citizenship anywhere. Even my own home country I don’t. I’ve never been there (Yemen).“

The US State Department has claimed Ms Muthana is not actually a US citizen because she was born to Yemeni parents. Her father — who worked as a diplomat in the US for a period of time — was not working as a diplomat at the time of her birth, according to her lawyer. US law does not automatically provide citizenship to the children of diplomats who are born within the country’s borders.

“Ms Hoda Muthana is not a US citizen and will not be admitted into the United States,” secretary of state Mike Pompeo said. “She does not have any legal basis, no valid US passport, no right to a passport nor any visa to travel to the United States.”

But Hassan Shibly, a lawyer for the woman, insisted Ms Muthana was born in the United States and had a valid passport before she joined the Islamic State in 2014. He says she has renounced the terrorist group and wants to come home to protect her 18-month-old son regardless of the legal consequences.

“She’s an American. Americans break the law,” said the lawyer with the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “When people break the law, we have a legal system to handle those kinds of situations to hold people accountable, and that’s all she’s asking for.”

Ms Muthana and her son are now in a refugee camp in Syria, along with others who fled the remnants of the Islamic State.

Her lawyer said that the administration argues that she did npt qualify for citizenship because her father was a Yemeni diplomat. But the lawyer said her father had not had diplomatic status at the time of her birth in Hackensack, New Jersey.

He released a copy of the woman’s birth certificate, issued two months after her birth on 28 October, 1994, to support his claim.

Ms Muthana’s lawyer said she was “just a stupid, naive, young dumb woman”, when she became enamoured of Islamic State, believing it was an organisation that protected Muslims.

The Associated Press Contributed to this report