The heavily-pregnant east London schoolgirl who ran away to become an ISIS bride fears she won’t see her jihadist husband again.
Shamima Begum, 19, is pleading with the Government to allow her back into the country to have her baby but admits she’ll miss Dutch jihadist Yago Riedijk, whom she said she still loved very much’.
It was revealed tonight that Begum – who is living at a refugee camp in Syria after the terror group was brought to its knees – was taken to hospital with false contractions.
In a new interview with Times journalist Anthony Loyd at the al-Hasakeh refugee camp, she said: ‘It was really hot. My contractions started and I was bleeding. I was in the hospital for five days, then they brought me back.’
Shamima Begum, 19, is pleading with the Government to allow her back into the country to have her baby but admits she’ll miss her jihadist husband
Yago Riedijk (left) is a 26-year-old Dutch convert who fled his comfortable middle-class home to join IS – earning him a six-year jail sentence in his absence in Holland
‘I’m nine months now. I should be giving birth any day. Especially with this stressful situation,’ she added.
Ms Begum fears her unborn baby will be taken away from her as her family pleaded for the teenager to be allowed back to the UK ‘as a matter of urgency’.
Ms Begum said she understood the controversy and intense media scrutiny a return to the UK would bring, but said she did not want to be separated from her child.
She said: ‘What do you think will happen to my child?
‘Because I don’t want it to be taken away from me, or at least if it is, to be given to my family.’
She also said she had been taken to hospital after having contractions following her arrival at the refugee camp, and could give birth ‘any day’.
The pregnant 19-year-old was tracked down by the newspaper four years after she travelled to Syria as a 15-year-old to join Islamic State, and she told how she would ‘do anything required just to be able to come home and live quietly with my child’.
Her case has been the subject of intense debate over what should happen to the teenager.
In a statement issued to ITV News, her family urged the Government to help her return to Britain to protect the welfare of her baby.
‘Given Shamima’s four-year ordeal, we are concerned that her mental health has been affected by everything that she has seen and endured,’ they said.
‘Now, we are faced with the situation of knowing that Shamima’s two young children have died – children that we will never come to know as a family.
‘This is the hardest of news to bear.
‘The welfare of Shamima’s unborn baby is of paramount concern to our family, and we will do everything within our power to protect that baby who is entirely blameless in these events.’
Begum’s family have called for the government to urgently bring her back because the unborn baby is a ‘total innocent’
Begum says she still loves Riedijk (pictured) very much and fears she’ll never see him again if she’s allowed back into the UK
Ms Begum told The Times she understood she could face a police investigation on her return, admitting: ‘I knew that coming back to the UK wouldn’t be a quiet thing. It’s uncomfortable.
‘If I ever do go back, it’ll be a long time before the cameras stop and all the questions stop.’
The former east London schoolgirl had previously admitted that she did not regret travelling to IS-controlled Syria, and asserted she was ‘not the same silly little 15-year-old schoolgirl who ran away from Bethnal Green four years ago’.
The statement her family issued on Friday evening said they were shocked by her comments in the interview, but her words were those ‘of a girl who was groomed’.
‘We are also mindful that Shamima is currently in a camp surrounded by IS sympathisers and any comments by her could lead directly to danger to her and her child,’ they added.
Her family said her unborn child had ‘every right as a total innocent to have the chance to grow up in the peace and security of this home’.
‘We welcome an investigation in what she did while she was there under the principles of British justice and would request the British Government assist us in returning Shamima and her child to the UK as a matter of urgency,’ the statement said.
Meanwhile the identity of her husband was revealed as Yago Riedijk, a Dutch convert who fled his comfortable middle-class home to join IS – earning him a six-year jail sentence in his absence in Holland.
He sent his family photographs from Syria posing with a fake rifle and in military gear. Riedijk also asked for cash and boasted about marrying a 15-year-old British girl.
Pictured: Begum at Gatwick Airport heading for Turkey in 2015 where she crossed into Syria
It was a far cry from earlier photos of him sitting on the bike with a child in front of him outside his parents’ home in the Dutch city of Arnhem. In others, his mother lovingly drapes her arm over his shoulder.
He was sentenced alongside six others in July after ignoring pleas from his family and the Dutch authorities to return home.
Riedijk’s whereabouts are unknown following his surrender to a Syrian rebel group.
Begum, who married him in 2015, said they were separated as they fled the last IS stronghold in Baghuz.
Last night, the shutters at his parents’ smart semi-detached home in a suburb of Arnhem were drawn. But neighbours told of their surprise that the once ‘polite, friendly’ little boy, who would play football in the street with his sister, was a jihadi fighter.
It comes as her family pleaded with the Government to allow the teenager back into the UK.
In a statement, her parents said the unborn baby is a ‘total innocent’ who has the right to grow up in the ‘peace and security’ of the UK.
Ms Begum was one of three Bethnal Green Academy schoolgirls who joined the terrorist group four years ago.
But the terror group has now been reduced to a tiny patch of land and Ms Begum is now in a refugee camp in Syria. The Government has indicated it will not allow her to return.
The development comes hours after a British former Guantanamo Bay prisoner called for Begum to be allowed to return because she is heavily pregnant and not a ‘threat’.
On Good Morning Britain former U.S. prisoner Moazzam Begg came to her defence, as debate rages over her future.
Mr Begg, who was held from 2002 to 2005, said: ‘I was held with young teenagers from the age of 14 to 15, some were terribly wounded, some were Western citizens.
‘They ended up there because of decisions by their parents and so forth and ended up in prison.
‘We keep saying she’s unrepentant, but how has that been interrogated by a short interview by the Times?
‘I think we cherry pick what’s been said – she also says that the Islamic State didn’t deserve victory because of its abuses.
‘The issue here in relation to this young girl is will she be a threat? Well she’s heavily pregnant at the moment. By the time she comes back, if she comes back, she’ll be giving birth.’
Yvonne Ridley, a British journalist captured by the Taliban in 2001 who later converted to Islam, also came to the schoolgirl’s defence.
She said: ‘We’re talking about a child who was groomed, that’s essentially what happened. She’s saying that she doesn’t have any regrets but you have to remember she’s in a refugee camp now with 39,000 other people.
‘Goodness knows how many eyes are on her and she’s been brutalised by war. We don’t know what she’s gone through, we don’t know if she feels fearful or she’s under threat.