FBI interpreter marries ISIS terrorist she was assigned to investigate

An FBI interpreter assigned to investigate a rapper-turned-ISIS terrorist ended up marrying him, it has been reported.

Translator Daniela Greene, 38, went to Syria in 2014 and married Denis Cuspert (above, centre), who was pictured holding up a bloody head in an ISIS recruiting video.

CNN reported that Greene realised she had made a mistake within weeks of the marriage and returned to the US, where she was arrested.

She spent two years in prison and was released last summer, as details of the bizarre case begin to emerge.

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Cuspert, who was born in Germany and rapped under the name, Deso Dogg, was known in Syria as Abu Talha al-Almani.

He was considered one of the most violent ISIS operatives in Syria, and had been filmed singing praise to Osama bin Laden and threatening former US president Barack Obama with a throat-cutting gesture.

On her return to the US after the marriage, Greene pleaded guilty to making false statements about terrorism and agreed to help the FBI.

CNN reported that Americans convicted of ISIS-related crimes have served an average of 13 years in prison.

‘It’s a stunning embarrassment for the FBI, no doubt about it,’ John Kirby, a former State Department official, told CNN.

Her lawyer, Shawn Moore, said Greene was ‘a well-meaning person that got up in something way over her head’.

Green was born in Czechoslovakia and raised in Germany, before moving to the US after marrying an American soldier at a young age.

She went to university in Oklahoma and later became a contract linguist for the FBI in 2011.

In January 2014, she was assigned to the case of a German terrorist known as ‘Individual A’, who was Cuspert.

He had quit rapping in 2010 after a car accident and turned to Islam, before becoming radicalised and entering Syria in 2013.

Greene had access to a number of Cuspert’s online accounts as part of her job at the FBI but kept one Skype number for him to herself.

In June 2014, she told her FBI bosses she was going on holiday to visit family in Germany, but instead she went to the Syrian border in Turkey and married Cuspert, even though she was still married to her US soldier husband.

But a month later she emailed a friend to say she was having doubts about the marriage to Cuspert.

‘I was weak and didn’t know how to handle anything anymore,’ she wrote. ‘I really made a mess of things this time.’

In another email the next day, she wrote: ‘I am gone and I can’t come back. I wouldn’t even know how to make it through, if I tried to come back.

‘I am in a very harsh environment and I don’t know how long I will last here, but it doesn’t matter, it’s all a little too late.’

A few weeks later, Cuspert was filmed in an ISIS video beating a corpse with a sandal, CNN reported.

Greene managed to flee Syria in August 2014 and returned to the US. Her case was kept private.

In October 2015, the Pentagon said Cuspert was killed in an air strike, but issued another statement nine months later to say he was still alive.

(Main picture: AFP)