Shamima Begum’s lies v reality: ISIS bride’s story challenged

Shamima Begum has made a fresh plea to be allowed back into Britain after being stripped of her citizenship for travelling to Syria to join ISIS. 

In a new BBC documentary that aired last night, she once again denies knowing anything about the terror group’s atrocities before leaving London and insists that after joining she was more of a ‘burden’ than an active participant. 

She tells a similar story in I’m Not A Monster, a controversial 10-part BBC podcast that investigates what happened to her after she left her home in Bethnal Green with two school friends in February 2015. 

However, her case is undermined by a series of inconsistencies that suggest she has twisted the truth. 

These range from whether she knew of ISIS atrocities before fleeing the UK to her account of what she did after arriving in Raqqa.

Below, we reveal the contradictions in her version of events –    

‘I’D NEVER WATCHED ISIS PROPAGANDA’ 

Begum repeatedly claims she ‘did not know’ about ISIS atrocities before leaving London and believed it was an Islamic ‘utopia’. 

She also insists she did not watch any violent propaganda videos, such as the beheadings of hostages.  

‘I didn’t know about these atrocities because as a 15-year-old I didn’t watch the news,’ Begum says. 

‘I got my news on social media where people were saying this is untrue, it’s an exaggeration.’

Broadcaster Josh Baker points out that the videos were all over social media as well as the news.  

She replies: ‘But they were constantly being taken down and like being deleted so it was very hard to watch these videos.

‘And the people who I was talking to who were in ISIS didn’t send these videos either.’

This was despite comments she made in 2019 to the BBC’s Middle East correspondent, Quentin Sommerville, who asked her: ‘One of the reasons you joined IS is because you watched some beheading videos, is that right?’

She replied: ‘Not just the beheading videos, the videos that show families and stuff in the park. 

‘The good life that they can provide for you. Not just the fighting videos, but yeah the fighting videos as well I guess.’

This audio was played back on the podcast, before Baker asked her: ‘You’ve said previously that you did watch ISIS propaganda in London… you said you were aware of the fighting and brutality of ISIS before you left’.

‘No,’ she replied.

Tim Loughton, Tory MP on the Home Affairs Select Committee, told the BBC documentary: ‘I don’t believe her and no reasonable person would. 

‘However much you’re a teenager watching the Kardashians at home and doing a load of stuff on social media nobody – particularly three intelligent students from East London – could have been absolutely oblivious to the horrors being waged by Daesh in Syria at that time.’ 

‘I NEVER RECEIVED ISIS TRAINING’

The documentary sees Begum deny reports she helped stitch ISIS terrorists into their suicide vests. 

Asked if she was trained by ISIS she replies, ‘No’. 

When Baker doubles down and asks ‘at any time during your life in ISIS were you given any form of either religious training or weapons training?’ she again says ‘no’.

The documentary sees Begum deny reports she helped stitch ISIS terrorists into their suicide vests

However, she is contradicted by Um Khaled, a former member of Hisbah – the terror group’s notorious religious police. 

She recalls seeing Begum in a training camp. 

‘We were in a training camp. They were only girls of course so didn’t have their Niqab on. So that’s when I saw her face,’ Khaled explains. 

‘All the girls who join ISIS for the first time are enlisted in this camp. Sometimes there would be religious studies and sometimes they introduced weapons training.’

‘I DIDN’T KNOW I STAYED WITH AN ISIS ARMOURER’

The jihadi bride describes how she stayed with the family of a ‘really nice’ Egyptian man in Raqqa after her husband was briefly imprisoned. 

Baker says he asked her about the man, who’s name was Abu Qomra, repeatedly over six interviews.

She gives a variety of answers, at first claiming she can’t know his name, then saying his real name was Saeed.

Begum claims not to know an Egyptian man she stayed with was an ISIS armourer 

And she says: ‘He was really nice to me, like a father figure.’

However, a neighbour who supplied Qomra with electricity says he supplied ISIS with weapons.  

‘He was a vicious person and spoke in an aggressive manner. He was bad – bad in the full sense of the word,’ the neighbour says. 

‘If she was living with him she would have known all the details of his life. It’s impossible she didn’t know.’

Huda Mukbil, a senior Canadian intelligence officer from 2001 to 2017, suggests Begum may have denied knowing the man’s real identity to avoid guilt by association. 

‘There’s fear, there’s trauma. This association in itself could mean that people could see her as a threat,’ she says. 

‘There are also consequences in terms of what she’s able to freely say knowing that any information can also incriminate her.’ 

‘LIFE IN RAQQA WAS ”NORMAL”’

Begum explains that the ISIS ‘capital city’ Raqqa seemed ‘normal’. 

‘It was kind of like how I imagined. Everything was functioning and stuff like it was normal life,’ she says. 

She also denies witnessing any public executions because her husband did not allow her to go outside. 

‘It was kind of like how I imagined. Everything was functioning and stuff like it was normal life,’ she says of Raqqa 

But in a previous interview with The Times, she described how she saw severed heads in bins. 

‘When I saw my first severed head in a bin it didn’t faze me at all,’ she said. 

‘It was from a captured fighter seized on the battlefield, an enemy of Islam. I thought only of what he would have done to a Muslim woman if he had the chance.’