LONDON // A British woman who fled ISIL with her five children after travelling to Syria described the experience as “not my cup of tea” in an interview on Wednesday.
Shukee Begum, 33, travelled to Syria with her children to find her husband Jamal Al Harith, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee who left Britain 18 months ago to join the group, Channel 4 news reported.
A law graduate from northern England, Ms Begum insists she only travelled to convince her husband to return and never supported ISIL.
“I was seeing on the news at this point that ISIL was going from bad to worse ... So I decided that I was going to try and speak some sense into him,” she told Channel 4 news.
At first, Ms Begum lived in a overcrowded safe house in Raqqa with dozens of other women and children, many “crying” and “sick”.
“There was a gangster kind of mentality among single women there. Violent talk, talking about war, killing,” Ms Begum said.
“They would sit together and huddle around their laptops and watch ISIL videos together and discuss them and everything. It was just not my cup of tea.”
After she was reunited with her husband, who refused to help her leave, ISIL authorities would not allow her to go, she added.
“This is what I want to make clear as well to other women thinking of coming into ISIL territory -- that you can’t just expect to come into ISIL territory and then expect that you can just leave again easily,” she said.
“There is no personal autonomy there at all.”
She was smuggled out of the territory before being held captive in Aleppo, and is now living close to the border with Turkey and hopes to move back to Britain, Channel 4 reported.
Hundreds of Britons are thought to have travelled to join the group.
A report released last month indicated that dozens of fighters have defected from ISIL, often due to disillusionment over killing fellow Muslims and civilians.
* Agence France-Presse
