An ‘ISIS matchmaker’ who reportedly lured Shamima Begum to Syria has begged the ‘British people’ to allow her back to the UK in an open letter.
Tooba Gondal, 25, left her home in Walthamstow, east London, and went to live in the terrorist group’s de facto capital of Raqqa in Syria in 2015.
The former student, who uses the pseudonym Umm Muthanna Al Britaniyah, reappeared in the Ain Issa detention camp with her two children Asiya and Ibrahim in April.
She had been trying to flee from ISIS-held Baghuz to the Turkish border two months earlier when she was stopped and handed over to western-backed Kurdish forces.
The mother-of-two has now made a desperate plea to the British people in an open letter, in which she implores the government to allow her to return with her children.
Tooba Gondal, 25, left her home in Walthamstow, east London, and went to live in the terrorist group’s de facto capital of Raqqa in Syria in 2015 (Pictured at the Ain Issa detention camp)
In the note, published by the Sunday Times, she said: ‘I desperately wish for the British government to take us back. I want to prove that I am a changed person; a much better individual for society.
‘I want to face justice in a British court. I wish to redeem myself. I would like Britain to accept my apology and to give me another chance.’
Gondal was accused in the past of acting as a ‘matchmaker’ for the terrorist group and luring women to Syria to marry ISIS fighters. It is believed jihadi bride Shamima Begum was among her recruits, the Mirror reported.
It was said her poisonous outpourings on the internet had glorified the murderous acts of Islamic State terrorists. In her rants, she called Britain a ‘filthy country’ and praised the 2015 terror attack on a Paris theatre.
The mother-of-two (pictured) has now made a desperate plea to the British people in an open letter, in which she implores the government to allow her to return with her children
Gondal (pictured holding an AK-47 in Syria) was accused in the past of encouraging young girls to flee to Syria and marry ISIS fighters
But now, from the detention camp, Gondal has insisted she was ‘manipulated and persuaded’ that it was her ‘obligation as a Muslim to travel to Syria’.
She wrote: ‘I was a vulnerable target to Isis recruiters. I was manipulated and persuaded that it was an obligation as a Muslim to travel to Syria.
‘I never became a member of Isis. I was forced at many stages to marry and I can’t say how many times I tried to escape. I wanted to leave from the start, but it became impossible. These criminals threatened to kill my babies.’
The mother-of-two has also offered to help ‘prevent vulnerable Muslims from being targeted and radicalised’ if she was permitted to return.
The British government has thus-far denied Gondal’s pleas, claiming she is a risk to national security. Her father, Mohammed, 59, said she was served with a Home Office exclusion order last November.
In the letter, she insisted her children are ‘completely innocent’ though she admits she must be held ‘to account’ for travelling to Syria.
It is believed jihadi bride Shamima Begum (pictured) was among Gondal’s recruits
Gondal, who has been married at least twice, is among dozens of British women and children who are currently held within at least three detention camps in Syria.
Among them are Begum, who Home Secretary Priti Patel this week insisted will not be allowed back to the UK.
Begum, 19, begged to come back to the UK to get therapy earlier this week after saying she now hates the Islamic State (IS).
She left the country as a 15-year-old and went to Syria to join IS. Within days she had married IS member Dutch-born Yago Riedijk.
Since then she says she has given birth to three children, all of whom died.
But in an interview with the Sun, Ms Patel responded to her plea by simply saying: ‘No way, no way.’
Begum, who is now living in an internment centre in Syria, said: ‘My mental health situation is not the best.
‘My physical health is OK. I am still young and I do not get sick. That is not my problem. Mentally, though, I am in a really bad way. I need therapy to deal with my grief. It is so hard. I have lost all my children.
‘None of the people I am living with in here know what I have experienced. They are not like my school friends who I could always talk to. They do not understand what I have been through.
‘There is no mental health provision. I have heard that in other camps there is psychiatric help, but not here.’
Ms Patel said: ‘Our job is to keep our country safe. We don’t need people who have done harm and left our country to be part of a death cult and to perpetrate that ideology.
‘We cannot have people who would do us harm allowed to enter our country – and that includes this woman.’