Shamima Begum’s husband Yago Riedijk speaks from his jail cell

Shamima Begum’s jihadi husband has spoken from his prison cell about his marriage to the ‘clueless’ underage schoolgirl, telling how she ‘had to learn obedience and how to please her husband’. 

Yago Reidijk was a 21-year-old ISIS fighter when he wed the 15-year-old Londoner in Raqqa, Syria, after they had spent 10 minutes speaking to ‘see if we clicked’. 

The Dutch convert, who is now behind bars in Syria, said that before the ceremony Begum gave him a list of ‘weird’ questions and requests, including being able to visit friends.  

In the disturbing interview on BBC documentary The Shamima Begum Story, dead-eyed Reidijk recalled how he took the schoolgirl to the park for ice cream after they were married by an ISIS judge. 

He said that at first she was ‘clueless’ about how to be a wife but then ‘learned how married life worked’ and the importance of ‘respect, pleasing her husband and obedience’. 

Asked by broadcaster Joshua Baker what he meant by obedience, he replied: ‘When I ask her to do something then she does it. It’s not very hard.’

Begum had three children by Riedijk, two of whom died of disease or malnutrition, and a third, born after her capture by Western-backed forces, died of pneumonia.

Before their wedding, Begum (pictured) gave Reidijk a list of ‘weird’ questions and requests, including being able to visit friends, he has revealed in an interview from his Syrian jail

Reidijk how he met with Begum for 10 minutes before they decided to marry.  

‘I just wanted a partner who I could find some rest with and who could take care of me,’ he said. ‘I asked if she knew how to cook and she said yes. 

‘Our meeting was 10 minutes max. We decided we wanted to try it. We don’t have such a thing as dating or going out and having a meal together.

‘You get to know each other a bit and then if you click you decide to take this step.’    

Begum – who as well as the documentary has also been given a 10-part BBC podcast – recalled feeling ‘shy’ at their initial meeting but added: ‘It was exciting for me because I’d never been in a relationship. 

‘My entire life I’d been surrounded by women so being with a man was a new concept to me. 

‘It was kind of scary too because this was a man I’d have to spend my life with for however long we were alive.’  

Asked what his new wife was like, Reidijk said: ‘She was very young when she came. She didn’t have a lot of life experiences. There wasn’t much of a person to get to know.

‘Most of her life experiences she has today are the experiences she had in the Islamic State as I got to know her. She was basically an empty paper. 

‘She had got a little bit of understanding about how married life worked, so that helped her out a lot. 

‘Respecting of the husband, trying to please the husband and obedience.’

‘Obedience to whom?’ broadcaster Joshua Baker asks. 

‘To the husband,’ Reidijk says. 

‘What does obedience to a husband look like?’ 

‘When I ask her to do something then she does it. It’s not very hard.’ 

‘It doesn’t sound like there is much choice in the dynamic between the two of you.’ 

‘No there is not.’

‘There’s no choice?’

‘No.’

‘So what you want, she has to do?’

‘Basically, yeah.’   

Challenged by broadcaster Joshua Baker about the fact that Begum was only 15, the terrorist replied: ‘She was underage, yeah’

The park where Reidijk took Begum after their marriage. Begum said the park was the same one she saw in an ISIS propaganda video 

Challenged by Baker about the fact that Begum was only 15, he replied: ‘She was underage, yeah. 

‘You might not agree with it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not right.’ 

Asked about whether she was comfortable marrying an ISIS fighter, Begum said:  ‘Before I married him I guess he was. I mean, I thought he was doing the right thing. I thought he was fighting for his religion and the state.’ 

She went on to say that Reidijk was ‘nice’ and ‘funny’ at first but went on to become ‘abusive’.  

Begum’s lawyers told an appeal against the rescinding of her British citizenship last year that there was ‘overwhelming’ evidence she was groomed and trafficked by ISIS for the purpose of ‘sexual exploitation and marriage to an adult male’. 

‘In doing so, she was following a well-known pattern by which ISIS cynically recruited and groomed female children, as young as 14, so that they could be offered as wives to adult men,’ Nick Squires, KC, told the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC).

Riedijk had fought in the bloody battle for Kobane at the end of 2014, against the Kurdish forces who now hold him, and was injured during the fighting

ISIS deliberately recruited underage girls for sexual exploitation and child marriage because they were needed for the ‘bearing of children, which was an important feature of its state-building project,’ he said.

Riedijk had fought in the bloody battle for Kobane at the end of 2014, against the Kurdish forces who now hold him, and was injured during the fighting.

‘It was known to be a massacre,’ he said in an earlier interview last year. ‘I don’t know how to describe it. Loads and loads of Islamic State fighters died there.’

Some members of his ISIS battalion – called Saif al-Dawla (Sword of ISIS) – refused to go and were thrown in jail, he added.

How Begum’s jihadi husband recalled how he baked CAKES with Begum during their ‘happy’ union

By Alan Duncan and Duncan Gardham 

Speaking during an interview last year from custody in northern Syria, Riedijk tired to paint a picture of his ‘happy’ marriage to Begum. 

‘We started baking cakes, selling cakes on the market in order to make money to survive.

‘I was doing most of the cooking. We did some of it together but she was pregnant I think at the time.

‘She was basically with the kids, we had a second child, my son Jarrah.

‘There were some nice days with the wife and kids at home. Some beautiful memories.’

During an interview last year from custody in northern Syria, Riedijk tired to paint a picture of his ‘happy’ marriage to Begum 

Previously he had been arrested just 10 days into their marriage.  

‘I was accused of being a spy by the Islamic State,’ he said. ‘She was pregnant at that point. I did not know and neither did she.’

‘I was denied any contact with her, even though my house was only 150 metres from the prison.

‘I asked for a visit and she came to visit me, my friend brought her, but they denied me any visitors.’

When he was eventually released Riedijk claims he distanced himself from ISIS in Raqqa, where he was living with Begum. 

When he was eventually released Riedijk claims he distanced himself from ISIS in Raqqa, where he was living with Begum.

‘A lot of people had talked about me, basically saying I was a spy and bad things. I started to distance myself from them, hang about with the Arabic community, mostly civilians.’ 

However, like Begum, Riedijk spoke of seeing corpses in the streets who had been executed by ISIS.

‘Sometimes, they leave the corpses there to scare the people, sometimes you walk by,’ he said.