Shamima Begum has claimed she only left the UK to join ISIS in Syria because she ‘didn’t want to be left behind’ as her other friends decided to travel.
The former Isis child bride, 21, said she joined her Bethnal Green classmates, Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana, in fleeing the UK because she was ‘young and naive’ and wanted to help people in war-torn Syria.
In her first detailed account since she left the UK aged 15 in 2015, she claimed she joined the Islamic State because she didn’t want to be the ‘friend that was left behind’ in a documentary about her life in a Syrian refugee camp.
Ms Begum, from Bethnal Green in East London, said she and her friends were recruited online by Isis supporters to be a ‘part of something’, adding that recruiters preyed on the guilt they felt at seeing Muslims suffer in the Syrian conflict
Shamima Begum (pictured) claimed she joined the Islamic State because she didn’t want to be the ‘friend that was left behind’ in a documentary about her life in a Syrian refugee camp
Ms Begum is currently being held at the al-Roj camp in northern Syria, after she had her British citizenship stripped by the Government, which in turn sparked an ongoing legal battle
Speaking on the documentary The Return: Life After Isis, Ms Begum revealed how she made the decision to travel to Syria. She said: ‘I knew it was a big decision, but I just felt compelled to do it quickly.
‘I didn’t want to be the friend that was left behind.’
In the documentary she cried when talking about losing her three children during the Syrian war and says that she wanted to kill herself because of the grief.
Speaking about the death of her daughter, Begum said: ‘When she died it was so hard because I just felt so alone and I felt like my entire world was falling apart in front of me and I couldn’t do anything.
‘When she [her daughter] died at that moment I just wanted to kill myself. I felt like I couldn’t even get up to run any more when there were bombings.
‘The only thing keeping me alive was my baby I was pregnant with. I felt like I had to do him right by getting him out and giving him a normal life.’
She said she did not understand why her babies died, adding: ‘I felt like it was my fault for not getting them out sooner even though I didn’t know why they died.’
She previously told reporters her children died of malnutrition and disease.
Her third child, a boy, died in March 2019 just a month after he was born, because of pneumonia.
Ms Begum is currently being held at the al-Roj camp in northern Syria, after she had her British citizenship stripped by the Government, which in turn sparked an ongoing legal battle.
Some of the other women in the camp were pictured with Begum inside the camp
Around 800 families live in the al-Roj camp, close to the borders with Turkey and Iran and much-preferred to the infamous al-Hol centre 80 miles away and home to 15,000 families.
In the 90-minute film, Ms Begum accused the Government of fabricating stories about her commitment to radical Islam when her citizenship was removed, claiming she was too scared to condemn Isis out of fears for her safety in the camp.
She also revealed the heartbreak of having to tell the parents of her friends Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana that the two girls had been killed in the city of Baghuz.
Tearfully recounting her story, she said: ‘Now I feel like I have no friends anymore, they were everything I had.’
It comes after Ms Begum revealed the wanted to kill herself when her three children died in Syria and begged Britain to give her a ‘second chance’.
Ms Begum, from East London, said Isis recruiters preyed on the guilt they felt at seeing Muslims suffer in the Syrian conflict. Pictured: Camp Roj in Syria where Ms Begum is held
Begum was 15 when she ran away with two other schoolgirls – Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Amira Abase, 15 – (all pictured at Gatwick airport) to Syria to marry a Dutch jihadi in 2015
Ms Begum is currently being held at the al-Roj camp in northern Syria (pictured), after she had her British citizenship stripped by the Government, which sparked an ongoing legal battle
Begum said that she hoped British people would have an ‘open mind about why I left and who I am now as a person’ and urged the government to allow her to return home.
Begum says people wrongly ‘feel like I’m responsible’ for the crimes of ISIS but she now realises she was ‘naive’ and rejects its beliefs.
She said: ‘They just think I knew about these crimes and I supported these crimes but that’s not true.
‘I would never support something like this, like the things they did.’
When Begum was tracked down for the first time in 2019 after fleeing the UK, she was pregnant, widowed and had lost two children.
Her third died shortly after birth and in the film Begum cried as she spoke about losing all of her babies.
She is one of several British women stranded in Roj camp after having their citizenship revoked.
Begum was 15 when she ran away with two other schoolgirls to Syria to marry a Dutch jihadi in 2015.
In February, the UK’s Supreme Court ruled that she cannot return to the UK to pursue an appeal against the removal of her British citizenship.