Jihadi brides who fled Germany for Syria beg to return home

Three jihadi brides who abandoned their German homeland to live under Islamic State in Syria are begging to be allowed to return home.

The women, identified only as Ayse, 32, Linda, 33, and Nadine, 29, say they were mistreated in Germany so went to the Middle East to forge new lives.

“I was badly treated in Germany because I wore niqab,” said Linda in an interview with the Bild newspaper in northern Syria. “I wanted to live my faith in peace with my family.”

Linda, from Munich, converted from Christianity to Islam as a teenager and married a Turk. She went on: “My husband and I were attacked on the streets because of our faith. We were afraid our children would be taken from us. A sister then recommended that we go to Islamic State.” One of her four children was born in the Syrian city of Raqqa.

Linda said she formed her views about life under Islamic State from looking at “beautiful videos” of the city. “There was a lot of talk about friendship and family. I thought: Here I will have no more pressure.”

Nadine, radicalised as a teenager, said: “I had coffee poured over my head because I wore the scarf. I was beaten, my things were destroyed. I just wanted to go away and live alone. If we had been treated better in Germany, 90 per cent of women would have certainly renounced the journey to Isis.”

She said her father read newspaper reports to her of IS atrocities but claims she told him: “No, that’s not true, because that is not Islam.” She too cared for her four children in Raqqa.

The families have been held by Kurdish forces since the fall of Raqqa. Nadine said: “I just want to go back to Germany, even though I can understand that Germans are afraid of returnees.”

Ayse is the only one of the three who admits to having witnessed atrocities being perpetrated.