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Thursday, February 14, 2019, 18:50
Teen who fled UK to join Islamic State wants to come home
By Associated Press
Thursday, February 14, 2019, 18:50 By Associated Press

This Feb 23, 2015 file handout image of a three image combo of stills taken from CCTV issued by the Metropolitan Police shows Kadiza Sultana, left, Shamima Begum, center, and Amira Abase going through security at Gatwick airport, south England, before catching their flight to Turkey. Shamima Begum told The Times newspaper in a story published Feb 14, 2019, that she wants to come back to London. (PHOTO / AP)

LONDON — A pregnant British teenager who ran away from Britain to join Islamic State extremists in Syria four years ago has said she wants to come back to London, but her path home is not clear.

Shamima Begum told The Times newspaper in a story published Thursday that she is nine months pregnant and worried about the health of her unborn child.

British officials believe roughly 900 Britons went to Syria to join the extremists' cause

"In the end, I just could not endure anymore," she said, describing the death from illness and malnutrition of her first two children. "Now all I want to do is come home to Britain."

The 19-year-old Londoner was found by the newspaper in a refugee camp in northern Syria. She was one of three schoolgirls from the Bethnal Green neighborhood who went to Syria to join IS in 2015 at a time when the group's online recruitment program lured a number of teenage girls to its self-proclaimed caliphate.

READ MORE: UN report: Up to 30,000 Islamic State members in Iraq, Syria

She told the newspaper she didn't regret joining the group and wasn't troubled the first time she saw the severed head of one of its execution victims — comments that will likely make it more difficult for her to convince British authorities she is ready to rejoin civilian society.

UK Security Minister Ben Wallace told Sky News it was "worrying" that Begum did not express remorse. He said she would have known what she was getting into when she left London for Syria.

He said the British public would be concerned about someone returning to a country that "they apparently hate" and stressed that "actions have consequences."
ALSO READ: British PM: Islamic State is 'not yet defeated'

She told Times reporter Anthony Loyd that she had married a jihadi shortly after arriving in Syria.

British officials believe roughly 900 Britons went to Syria to join the extremists' cause. Of those, they believe around 20 percent died and about half of the survivors have returned to Britain.

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