BBC gives Shamima Begum 10-part PODCAST to tell her story of how she joined ISIS 

The BBC has released a 10-part podcast about Shamima Begum in which she tells her story of how she joined ISIS and about life in a refugee camp.

In 2015, Begum, then 15, and her school friends Kadiza Sultana, 15, and Amira Abase, 16, fled their East London homes to join IS.

Begum, now 23, was found in a refugee camp in 2019 and soon after the UK withdrew her citizenship and banned her from entering Britain.

She now lives at the al-Roj camp in northern Syria, run by the Syrian Democratic Forces, which she described as ‘worse than a prison’ on the podcast.

The BBC Sounds podcast follows an investigative journalist who has been talking to Begum for a year and it gives ‘her full account of what really happened after she disappeared’.

In 2015, Begum (centre), then 15, and her school friends Kadiza Sultana (left), 15, and Amira Abase (right), 16, fled their East London homes to join IS. Her two companions are believed to have died while there

In the first episode, journalist Josh Baker meets Begum in the Syrian detention camp to discover how she joined ISIS and eventually ended up stranded.

She told him about being stuck in a camp: ‘This is, I feel, worse than a prison I think it’s because at least with prison sentences you know that there will be an end but here you don’t know if there’s going to be an end.’

On the topic of public anger aimed at her, she said: ‘I don’t think it’s actually towards me. I think it’s towards Isis.

‘When they think of Isis they think of me because I’ve been put on the media so much but what was there to obsess over?

‘We went to Isis, that was it. It was over, it was over and done with.’

In the podcast the 23-year-old claims that the refugee camp in Syria she is in is ‘worse than a prison’

Josh Baker said: ‘There are different ways to tell the Shamima Begum story. There’s the one about a 15-year-old schoolgirl who was groomed and lured to a war zone by ISIS and now needs saving from a Syrian detention camp.

‘And there’s the one about a traitor, who fled Britain to join ISIS and became known the world over as a terrorist and must be stopped from coming back to Britain.

‘As Shamima challenges the removal of her British citizenship by the UK government, I’ve examined her accounts to give listeners a definitive narrative on this complex, nuanced and shocking story.’

The series says it is aiming to ‘separate fact from fiction’ as it tries to answer the question ‘who is Shamima Begum?’

Other topics that will be explored include how she got to Syria and what did she did when she got there.

The broadcaster also states that the podcast is not an opportunity for Begum to tell her story unchallenged, but is a ‘robust public interest investigation’.

Episode 1 of ‘I’m Not A Monster’: The Shamima Begum Story is available to listen to today on BBC Sounds.

New episodes will be available and will also be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 from 11am.