IS recruiter Sally Jones 'wants to return to Britain' from Raqqa

Sally Jones - the former punk rocker who became the leading female recruitment officer for IS, married a now-dead jihadist and took her son to Raqqa - wants to come home to Britain.

That is, at least, the view of 'Aisha', the wife of another immigrant to the so-called Islamic caliphate now under Kurdish guard in a refugee camp in Syria.

In an exclusive interview with Sky News, Aisha (her real name is being withheld) insisted that very few immigrants to the 'caliphate' wanted to join the war. And that includes Sally Jones.

I asked her: "Did you meet many British people?"

She replied: "I know one - Umma Hussain al Britani".

She used Jones' nom de guerre. Junaid Hussain was IS' chief of digital jihad. He was killed by a US drone in 2015 while planning terror plots against the West.

Aisha went on: "She lost her husband in a battle last year. She has one boy."

Jones' British-born son is now about 12. He is believed to have been forced to execute prisoners.

This does not appear to have registered with Aisha, who said that Jones was "about 50 years and she's very cute".

And then the remarkable assertion that Jones - a woman the international coalition dropping bombs on IS, also known as ISIS, would gladly see in their sights - wants to go back to the UK.

"She was crying and wants to get back to Britain but ISIS is preventing her because she is now a military wife. She told me she wish to go to her country," Aisha said.

This, of course, is a ludicrous claim - unless Jones has given up on her jihadi campaign and is now prepared to swap martyrdom for a lifetime in prison.

Even that is a forelorn hope. Brett McGurk, the leading US diplomat in the fight against the so-called caliphate, recently announced that the 3,000 to 3,500 foreign fighters in Raqqa would die there.

Aisha revealed that her Moroccan husband had travelled to IS before the caliphate was even declared by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi in June 2014.

She said that he had been a dealer in ruins and antiquities in Europe and had been told by a friend that he could buy them cheaply in the caliphate.

The extremist regime drew heavily for funding on the sale of stolen antiquities and taxed criminal gangs who pitted the landscape under its control with illegal digs.

Knowing Jones put Aisha close to the very centre of power in the now smashed caliphate.

Its leaders are mostly on the run to the southern desert in Syria while others have chosen to try to infiltrate Europe.

Aisha insisted she was not among the violent supporters of IS. But when I told her my adult daughter "has a boyfriend", she said: "If she was my daughter I would cut her throat."

Then added: "I'm only joking."

One can only hope so.