The British-born jihadi bride was married to the most senior American member of ISIS has spoken out, revealing her new life as a suburban mom in Dallas.
Tania Choudhury, 33, detailed her radicalization, dreams for children who would become terrorists, and ultimate split with her jihadi husband in a new interview with The Atlantic released Friday.
‘Our dreams were to have land of our own, raise a family and train them be assassins or whatever, soldiers, and then eventually go join the jihad,’ she said of her ex-husband John Georgelas, an American-born convert to Islam who has risen to the upper ranks of ISIS.
From the comfort of her new life on the northern outskirts of Dallas, where she lives with Georgelas’ wealthy parents and attends a Unitarian church with her IT programmer boyfriend Craig, Choudhury described the extraordinary journey that took her from England to Syria, and finally America.
Tania Choudhury, 33, is seen with her new boyfriend Craig at their Unitarian church in suburban Dallas. She has spoken out for the first time about life as a jihadi bride in ISIS
British-born Choudhury met American-born John Georgelas (right) through a Muslim dating website, and the two were quickly married in October 2004 and later joined ISIS together
She is one of five children born in London to British-Bangladeshi couple Nural and Jahanara Choudhury.
‘I faced a lot of racism,’ she says of her childhood in Harrow. ‘We had bad neighbors, they would smash our windows, but generally I just felt like an outsider.’
‘I was looking for a way to retaliate,’ she said.
Choudhury said the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 were a turning point for her radicalization.
‘I was 17, I saw the towers being crashed into and I went to school the next day,’ she recalled. ‘I said to my friend, “Oh isn’t it dreadful what happened,” and she looked at me and said “Is it really?”‘
‘At that point I became really jihadi hardcore,’ she said.
A few years later, she was at a protest against the Iraq war when she says Muslim men were handing out slips of paper, with the address of a Muslim matchmaking website on them.
Through the website, she met John Georgelas, the youngest child and only son of former US military doctor Colonel Timothy Georgelas and his wife Martha.
Choudhury is seen with her three youngest children. ‘I’ve had these children for one reason only, and that was so they could serve god as Muslims, as mujahideen,’ she recalls
Growing up in Plano, Texas, Georgelas is said to have rebelled as a teenager, becoming a prolific drug user, dropping out of school and converting to Islam shortly after 9/11.
The fell in love over discussions of jihad and dreams of a caliphate: a match made made in hell.
Choudhury with one of her children
Choudhury was was heavily pregnant when the pair wed in a civil ceremony in October 2004 at the Gothic town hall in Rochdale, England.
They’d had three children and another on the way when, in 2013, they began discussing joining ISIS in Syria.
‘John wanted to go to Syria, and I said I wasn’t ready, not while the kids are small,’ she recalls.
But they did go, even though Choudhury was some five months pregnant, and they brought along their young children.
‘I’ve had these children for one reason only, and that was so they could serve god as Muslims, as mujahideen,’ she recalls.
In August 2013, the family traveled to Syria by bus, setting up home in the abandoned villa of a Syrian general in the town of A’zaz. There were no windows, no running water and only a meager supply of food. Within days, Tania and the children became ill with vomiting bugs and infections.
Astonishingly, given what is known about the way ISIS treats those who turn their back on it, Georgelas agreed to his wife’s demands to leave.
With the help of Georgelas’ parents, she made her way back to Texas with the children, and sought and obtained a divorce from him. He remains in Syria to this day, where he has become the highest ranking American in ISIS.
Single in a new city, Choudhury returned to the world of online dating.
‘I went to the dating website Match, I wrote an essay: “I have four kids, my husband abandoned me to go become the next Osama Bin Ladin”. I got 1300 replies.’
She met her new beau Craig, an IT worker, within 24 hours on the site.
Choudhuy joined Match.com and described herself as a single mother of four whose husband had left ‘to become the next Osama Bin Laden’. She quickly got over 1,300 replies
‘She told me pretty much from about the first phone call,’ Craig recalled. ‘She said right away that husband was in IS, and I said “Ok, that’s alright”.’
Craig, originally from Minnesota, introduced Choudhury to the wine bars and bistros of the north Dallas suburbs, and the pair quickly became a couple.
They now attend a Unitarian church together, and Choudhury says she’d like to work for a de-radicalization program that could help former terrorists.
‘A lot of people see me as someone very unlucky, but I see the glass half full,’ she said. ‘I’m alive, I got out of Syria and my children are happy, healthy and smart. I’m content.’
In January, Daily Mail reported that there were some questions around just how completely Choudhury had severed ties with her former husband and his radical ideology.
After fleeing Syria, she has visited a social networking site used by her husband to post his extremist articles and ‘liked’ a final post made before the site was closed down.
There have been questions around just how completely Choudhury severed ties with her former jihadi husband. Reporter Graeme Wood believes she is genuinely reformed
And, as she wrote in one of her Facebook posts: ‘I’m still so in-love with Ioannis….. Nonetheless I’m tired of being pushed over the edge by him, and being told: “Tania, you’re a strong woman! Pick yourself up so I can push you over again!” I want my husband back but not on those terms.’
Atlantic reporter Graeme Wood, an ISIS expert, wrote that in his interviews with Choudhury, she seemed genuinely reformed.
‘She never, in my conversations with her, advocated violence or seriously regretted leaving John at the Syrian border,’ Wood wrote.
‘And yet there are signs – not of violence, but of a permanent effect of her jihadist brainwashing,’ he continued, pointing to an offhand comment Choudhury had made that Shiite Muslims are ‘not really Muslim’ and a casual characterization of ISIS followers as just wanting ‘to live under a caliphate’.
Of her former husband, who seems destined to die for his vision of a Muslim caliphate as ISIS makes its final stand on dwindling territory, Choudhury says: ‘He thought what he was doing was for the greater good,’
‘I can’t help but love him. I don’t know how to make that feeling stop,’ she said.