British Woman Flees Isis, Says It 'Wasn't My Cup Of Tea'

A British woman who left the UK for Syria in search of her jihadi husband has spoken about life inside Islamic State.

Shukee Begum, 33, took her five children with her when she went to find her former Guantanamo Bay detainee husband Jamal al-Harith last August.

She told Channel 4 News that she wasn’t a fan of the “gangster mentality” prevalent among single girls there. “Violence was talked about, war, killing. They would sit together, huddle around their laptops, watch Isis videos. It just wasn’t my cup of tea.”

Begum - who’s believed to still be living in Syria - has now fled Isis and wants to return to the UK, but fears that the authorities won’t welcome her back.

“I would love to go back to the UK,” she told Channel 4 News. “The UK is my home. I grew up there, my friends are there, my family are there.

“That is where I consider to be home but I am just not sure at the moment of the track record of the current government if the UK is somewhere I can come back to and achieve justice.”

Despite successfully making the trip from Manchester with her children, now aged nine, seven, five, three and 11-months, Begum realised that Isis wasn’t for her. After 10 months, she and her children fled to the war-torn city of Aleppo, close to the Turkish border, where they were held by smugglers.

It’s believed that Syrian rebels from the Nusra Front then intervened to facilitate her release.

Asked why she made the trip in the first place, Begum said: “He’s my husband and all of a sudden he’s not there. It didn’t feel like home any more. I was trying to manage school runs, things like that.

“I was thinking about the children’s futures. Was he part of it? Will he come back? All these things go through your mind.”

She added that the reality of life within Isis didn’t make for a comfortable existence, with hundreds of families living in one hall sharing one or two bathrooms.

When she requested to leave, she says that permission was denied by Isis courts: “This is what I want to make clear as well to other women thinking of coming into Isis territory – that you can’t just expect to come into Isis territory and then expect that you can just leave again easily. There is no personal autonomy there at all.”