British woman who lived with Isis fighters in Syria: 'It was just not my cup of tea'
Shukee Begum remains in Syria but wants to return to the UK
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Your support makes all the difference.A British woman who travelled to Syria with her five children and lived among Isis fighters has said it was not her “cup of tea”.
Speaking to Channel 4 News, Shukee Begum detailed her living arrangement in Syria, which involved living in a crowded safe-house in Raqqa — a city currently under the occupation of Isis.
“You’ve got hundreds of families living in one hall, sharing perhaps one or two bathrooms between them, one or two kitchens between them,” she said.
“There was a gangster kind of mentality among single women there. Violent talk — talking about war, killing. They would sit together and huddle around their laptops and watch Isis videos together and discuss them and everything. It was just not my cup of tea.”
Ms Begum, 33, went to Syria to search for her husband Jamal al-Harith, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee.
Mr al-Harith, a British citizen, is believed to have left the UK to join Isis in 2014.
Ms Begum told the broadcaster she does not support Isis and instead travelled to the country to look for her husband to try and persuade him to return home.
“I was seeing on the news as this point that Isis was going from bad to worse… So I decided that I was going to try and speak some sense into him,” she said.
Ms Begum, a law graduate, flew her family to Turkey before crossing the border into Syria.
When reunited with her husband, she failed to persuade him to leave Isis so contacted people smugglers in an attempt to re-enter Turkey. She did so apparently because neither her husband nor the Islamic court would help her leave, with the court telling her: “Women and children belong in Isis territory.”
Instead of crossing into Turkey, Ms Begum says she and her children were held in Aleppo, Syria in poor conditions by the people smugglers for almost three months before being freed.
They still live in Syria, close to the Turkish border. Ms Begum says she is awaiting return to Britain as she fears she could face charges of terrorism.
She said: “I’d love to go back to the UK. The UK is my home. I grew up there. My friends are there. My family are there. That’s where I consider home.”