Former ISIS bride who left US for Syria says she 'interpreted everything very wrong' originally appeared on abcnews.go.com In her first television interview, a 24-year-old Alabama woman who spent four years as an ISIS bride told ABC News that she'd felt obligated to go to Syria once the so-called caliphate had been announced by the terror group. Hoda Muthana was born in New Jersey and moved to New York and then Washington, D.C., before finally settling with her family in Alabama as a seventh-grader, she said. Muthana said she had a good relationship with her family but found home life very strict and longed for a more Americanized life, one in which she was able to go out and have friends. PHOTO: Hoda Muthana is pictured with her 18-month-old son. She left Alabama four years at the age of 19 to marry an ISIS fighter. Now, she wants to return to the U.S. (null) At the age of 17, she turned to social media, specifically Twitter. A year later, she became radicalized, Muthana told ABC News Tuesday. (MORE: Reporter's Notebook: On the ground in Syria during ISIS's last stand, where desperation and sorrow pervades everything) Once she joined ISIS, she sent messages of hate herself. She spread ISIS propaganda online, calling for attacks on Americans. In one tweet regarding Memorial Day weekend, she wrote: "Americans wake up. ... Go on drive-bys and spill all of their blood. ... Veterans, patriots." When ISIS announced the so-called caliphate, Muthana said, the community she'd joined "interpreted ourselves that it was obligatory upon us to go." She said she was driven by a fear of God and a fear of doing the wrong thing, so she traveled to Syria without thinking of the consequences. PHOTO: Hoda Muthana, 24, spoke to ABC News for her first television interview. Muthana, an Alabama woman, traveled to Syria in 2014 and became an ISIS bride. She now wants to return to the U.S. (ABC News) Muthana, who would not comment on how she paid for her trip to Syria, first traveled to Turkey and then crossed the border into Syria in November 2014. Muthana said she remembered getting shot at as she crossed the border. She was 19 at the time. In 2017, Muthana's father told ABC News' Diane Sawyer that he'd been proud when she seemed to become more devout about religion. He said he had no idea that she was secretly taking cues from ISIS recruiters sending her messages over the phone. Story continues (MORE: White House decision looms as US military continues with Syria withdrawal plan) "I never thought in my life that it would happen to us, to me, to my family, but it happened," he said. "It could happen to any other family." She was put in a safe house in Raqqa, the so-called capital of the caliphate, where, she said, about 200 people lived. She said that she had one option if she wanted to leave the house: Get married. So, she married an Australian ISIS fighter. He was killed three months after their marriage, she said. At 20 years old, Muthana became a widow for the first time. She later married a Tunisian, who fathered her only child, a son. He was killed a little over a year later, she said. "Everyone blames the struggles of the things that go on in a war zone that it's a test from God basically," Muthana said. Muthana said although she never saw any executions, she did see dead bodies in public. (MORE: Shamima Begum, UK teen who joined ISIS in 2015, 'wants to come home') She told ABC News she felt shame hearing of the tweets she posted when she was part of ISIS. "I was still at the peak of being brainwashed I guess and I had people all around me that were just widowed so we were very angry ... because we were all just young girls married for the first time -- most of us it was our first relationships -- and then he just suddenly died," she said. "I can't even believe I thought of that." Two years after she arrived in Syria, Muthana became pregnant. She said that's when she started thinking about her future in a war zone, about her family and about the fate of unborn child. When she went to her friends and her husband about possibly leaving, she said they were shocked. Her 18-month-old son was born in Raqqa. She said they stayed there for two weeks as mortars were fired in the neighborhood. "The more I gained knowledge, I knew that it wasn't correct. ... We were just at the beginning of seeking knowledge once we did come to ISIS so we had just young people not knowing much about their religion, thinking they knew everything really, and we interpreted everything very wrong," Muthana said. PHOTO: Hoda Muthana is pictured with her 18-month-old son. She left Alabama four years at the age of 19 to marry an ISIS fighter. Now, she wants to return to the U.S. (null) For six months, Muthana said, there was no food in the markets or in the trucks. People tried to hide the food they had, she said. She and her son were forced to eat the wheat that was fed to cattle. She decided it was time to go, she said, after she plucked grass from outside her home and fried it. Seeing her son eat grass was the final straw, she said. "Everyone was starving," she said. She surrendered to Kurdish authorities and is now one of 1,500 foreign women and children living in a Kurdish-run refugee camp in northern Syria. (MORE: Alabama mother begs to return to US, says moving to Syria and marrying ISIS fighters was 'a big mistake') She expressed remorse and regret about her social media posts inciting violence in the name of Islam and ISIS. "I wish I could take it completely off the Net, completely out of people's memory. ... I regret it. ...<doc-sep>An American woman and a British teenager who fled to Syria to marry Islamic State group fighters pleaded to be allowed to return home. Hoda Muthana, 24, left Alabama four years ago for Islamic-State-held territory in Syria. She was found living with her 18-month-old son in the same refugee camp in northern Syria where Shamima Begum, 19, from London, gave birth to a baby boy over the weekend, according to British media reports and Begum's lawyer. Muthana told The Guardian newspaper that she regrets joining the terrorist group and that she and other recruits did so because they were "ignorant" and "brainwashed." "I look back now, and I think I was very arrogant," said Muthana, who was married three times in Syria. Her first two husbands died fighting for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. Muthana is among about 1,500 foreign women and children inside the al-Hawl refugee camp. Her legal status is not clear, and U.S. immigration authorities were not immediately available to answer questions about her case. Muthana claimed she has had no contact with U.S authorities. She is not allowed to leave the camp and has armed guards. "I believe that America gives second chances. I want to return, and I’ll never come back to the Middle East. America can take my passport, and I wouldn’t mind," Muthana said. Begum, who left Britain as a 15-year-old, also wants to be allowed to travel home, but her story has become the subject of intense debate in Britain because she has expressed little remorse for the Islamic State's brutality, including its beheadings, in Syria. "Yeah, I knew about those things, and I was OK with it. I started becoming religious just before I left. From what I heard, Islamically, that is all allowed, so I was OK with it," Begum told British media. "I never did anything dangerous. I never made propaganda. I never encouraged people to come to Syria." Begum had two other children during her time in Syria, but they both died in infancy from malnutrition and illness. Mohammed Akunjee, Begum's London-based lawyer, said in a statement that Begum's baby, born Sunday, is believed to be in "good health." She wants to care for her newborn son back in Britain. Begum's Britain-based family said Begum's new son is a "total innocent," is British and has "every right" to grow up on British soil. Alex Younger, former head of Britain's foreign intelligence service, MI6, argued that Begum can't be prevented from returning home unless she is also a national of another country, which she isn't. Sajid Javid, Britain's interior minister, indicated he may take steps to block Begum's return. "My message is clear: If you have supported terrorist organizations abroad, I will not hesitate to prevent your return," he said last week. More:Report: Girl who fled London to join ISIS killed in airstrike More:Video appears to show missing London schoolgirls More:Trump: ISIS caliphate has been decimated President Donald Trump – who declared the Islamic State defeated in Syria though military experts disagreed with that assessment – urged European allies to "take back over 800" Islamic State fighters captured in Syria and put them on trial. "The Caliphate is ready to fall," Trump said in a tweet Saturday. "The alternative is not a good one in that we will be forced to release them ... The U.S. does not want to watch as these ISIS fighters permeate Europe, which is where they are expected to go. We do so much, and spend so much - Time for others to step up and do the job that they are so capable of doing. We are pulling back after 100% Caliphate victory!" About 300 Islamic State fighters are clinging to a tiny area in eastern Syria under siege from U.S.-backed Syrian forces. Gen. Joseph Votel, in charge of U.S. military operations in the Middle East, testified this month during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that there are 20,000-30,000 Islamic State fighters in Syria. Votel's appraisal is in line with estimates from the United Nations and U.S. Department of Defense. The number of young Western women who traveled to Syria to participate in Islamic State activities, whether on the battlefield or as spouses, is not known. Estimates vary from about 550 to as many as 1,000. In addition to the USA and Britain, they traveled from France, Germany, Russia, Scandinavia and from across North Africa. "Women and children, even if not complicit in or contributing to what (ISIS) was doing, will require repatriation and resettlement assistance," wrote Daniel Milton and Brian Dodwell, researchers at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, the U.S. military academy. "Those who were willing participants in the organization will be of special concern to security services."<doc-sep>See the recovery efforts in Gaza as ceasefire appears to hold 'Is everything I'm trying to do pointless? ': Syrians helpless in face of 'sham' election Report: US companies may have benefited from forced labor of Uyghurs Residents stand near stalls along a road amidst debris while strong winds batter Balasore district in Odisha state on May 26, 2021 as Cyclone Yaas barrels towards India's eastern coast in the Bay of Bengal. (Photo by Dibyangshu SARKAR / AFP) (Photo by DIBYANGSHU SARKAR/AFP via Getty Images) France's President Emmanuel Macron (L) and Rwanda's President Paul Kagame speak as they walk in the grounds of The Presidential Palace in Kigali on May 27, 2021, after their press conference and prior to their official luncheon. - French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Rwanda on May 27, 2021, for a highly symbolic visit aimed at moving on from three decades of diplomatic tensions over France's role in the 1994 genocide in the country. Macron is the first French leader since 2010 to visit the East African nation, which has long accused France of complicity in the killing of some 800,000 mostly Tutsi Rwandans. (Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP) (Photo by LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP via Getty Images) (CNN) — At the age of 19, a young woman from Hoover, Alabama traveled to Syria to join ISIS – the so-called “Islamic State.” Five years and three husbands later, she says she regrets what she did and is begging to return to the US. In a recent handwritten note obtained by CNN from a family representative, Hoda Muthana writes, “When I left to Syria I was a naive, angry, and arrogant young woman. I thought that I understood my religious beliefs.” Hoover High School Yearbook Hoda Muthana But after witnessing the devastation of war, including the death of two husbands, Muthana said she became disillusioned. “During my years in Syria I would see and experience a way of life and the terrible effects of war which changed me. Seeing bloodshed up close changed me. Motherhood changed me. Seeing friends, children, and the men I married dying changed me,” the now 24-year-old wrote. “Seeing how different a society could be compared to the beloved America I was born and raised into changed me. Being where I was and seeing the (people) around me scared me because I realized I didn’t want to be a part of this. My beliefs weren’t the same as theirs.” CNN has not yet been able to speak with her directly. Provided to CNN Outspoken support Once described as shy and reserved by a high school classmate, Muthana was fiercely outspoken in her support for jihad after joining ISIS. During the height of the self-declared caliphate, Muthana posted tweets calling for violence, according to the Program on Extremism at the George Washington University. “Hoda was right in the mix for English language propagandists,” said terror researcher Seamus Hughes. “We followed her for a number of years. She was a key node.” She demanded more Americans come to the self-proclaimed Caliphate and join the fight with ISIS. Gabriel Chaim for CNN Coalition jets hit ISIS positions in Susa, Syria, in January. “Soooo many Aussies and Brits here, but where are the Americans, wake up u cowards,” she posted in January 2015. And under the name Umm Jihad, she encouraged attacks in the US, tweeting this exhortation in March 2015: “Go on drive-bys and spill all of their blood, or rent a big truck and drive all over them.” According to Mia Bloom, who tracks female jihadis at Georgia State University, “She was one advocating for extreme violence, especially against American military and servicemen.” 05:43 - Source: CNN ISIS wife: It was like Tinder Regret In a February 19 interview with ABC News, Muthana said she is now ashamed of those posts, and wishes she could take them back. She said she feels remorse and sorrow and regret, and begged to return home. “I hope America doesn’t think I’m a threat to them and I hope they can accept me,” she told ABC. But if she does end up returning to the US, it may not be on her own terms. Hassan Shibly, head of Florida’s Council on American-Islamic Relations and a representative for her family, said the family understands Muthana may be prosecuted, believes in the legal system, and asks only for due process. The Justice Department did not comment on whether she would be extradited or prosecuted. State Department spokesman Robert Palladino said Tuesday that he could not discuss her particular case, but said that for any ISIS members in Syria, the department’s policy, “in this regard, would be to repatriate them – and that’s what we call on all countries to do.” Asked if ISIS members could be sent to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Palladino would only say: “The US government is considering various alternative disposition options, for foreign terrorist fighters who cannot be repatriated.” 01:55 - Source: CNN CNN goes inside last ISIS enclave Kurdish refuge According to Muthana, she ran away from ISIS a few weeks ago and headed for the Kurdish area in northern Syria, where she is now in a camp for the displaced with her 18-month-old son. In her note, she speaks of her son’s future. “In my quiet moments – in between bombings, starvation, cold, and fear – I would look at my beautiful little boy, and know that I didn’t belong here, and neither did he,” she wrote. Only now does she “really understand how important the freedoms that we have in America are.” But Hughes, the researcher, has words of caution. “Let’s not put a rosy color on what she did,” he said. “She joined a foreign terrorist organization.” CNN’s David Shortell contributed to this report.<doc-sep>(CNN) When a 19-year-old British teenager who ran away to join ISIS in Syria announced her desire to return home, it blew open the long-simmering question of what governments should do with returning jihadis and their families. In a series of interviews, Shamima Begum, who married a Dutch ISIS fighter and recently gave birth, appealed for public sympathy, despite showing little remorse for ISIS atrocities. In an interview with the BBC on Monday, she said the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing, in which 23 people died, was justified because of Western airstrikes in ISIS territory. The public backlash was swift and by Tuesday, Britain announced its intention to strip Begum of her citizenship. Her family's lawyer Mohammed Akunjee said they were considering "all legal avenues to challenge the decision." Begum's case represents the legal and moral conundrum facing countries as ISIS nears its final defeat in southeastern Syria, with potentially hundreds of jihadists -- many currently in jail or refugee camps -- wanting to come home. No legal obligation to assist ISIS followers There is little political will in Europe to allow former ISIS fighters to return, as shown by the UK Home Office's decision to revoke Begum's citizenship. At its height, ISIS controlled an area the size of Great Britain and ruled over 10 million people. It was estimated that the area included more than 40,000 international citizen from 80 countries, according to data from The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR). Today, the territory is just a few hundred square meters as the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) push through ISIS' last holdout in Syria. Now, thousands of ISIS members, including women and children, are in SDF custody -- of whom hundreds are believed to be from European nations. Few countries have embassies or extradition treaties with Syria. Nor have they shown any desire to go to the areas where ISIS fighters and families are being held, and put their government representatives in harm's way, said Joana Cook, Senior Research Fellow at the ICSR at King's College London. Externally, though, pressure for action in mounting. On Sunday, US President Donald Trump threatened to release hundreds of foreign fighters captured in Syria unless European governments take them back and put them on trial. The United States is asking Britain, France, Germany and other European allies to take back over 800 ISIS fighters that we captured in Syria and put them on trial. The Caliphate is ready to fall. The alternative is not a good one in that we will be forced to release them........ — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2019 The British government is under "no legal obligation to collect people" from SDF prisons, said Alex Carlile, a British barrister, cross-bench member of the House of Lords and former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. If fighters wanted to return they would have to find assistance from places with consular representation, such as Turkey, he said. "Like so many things President Trump says, it is accompanied by not a great deal of research," Carlile told CNN. Repatriation Only a small number of nations, including Russia, Indonesia, Lebanon and Sudan, have allowed ISIS followers to return from Syria and Iraq. "(European) countries are naturally reluctant to take back people who create a danger to their national security," Carlile said. "The inevitable consequences of the attrition of ISIS (are) they revert to increased terrorism attacks in Europe." The UK has found a way to circumvent the issue, at least as far as dual nationals are concerned -- revoking their citizenshi p. UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid told the House of Commons Monday that more than 100 people had been stripped of their British passports. But the government is barred under both British and international law from rendering a citizen stateless. In the case of Shamima Begum, Javid seems to be getting around this by "reworking" British immigration legislation, said Hashi Mohamed, a former special adviser to David Anderson, a former independent reviewer of UK terrorism legislation. Mohamed, now a barrister specializing in public law, said Javid seemed to be relying on a section in the 2014 Immigration Act, which states that nationality can be revoked if there are "reasonable grounds for believing that the person is able, under the law of a country or territory outside the United Kingdom, to become a national of such a country or territory." Mohamed said Javid's move opened a can of worms and risked creating a "two-tiered British nationality." Javid said he plans to use "all powers available" to block British fighters and supporters of terrorism from returning to the UK, and is "considering" an update to the country's 668-year-old treason legislation. He added that 900 British people are believed to have traveled to fight in Iraq and Syria. Of those, 180 were killed and 360 have returned, leaving 360 still believed to be "somewhere in the region." France, meanwhile, is reportedly considering repatriating around 130 jihadi fighters of French origin -- a proposal that has come in for stiff criticism from opposition groups. Germany's Foreign Ministry said in statement sent to CNN that it "is examining possible options to enable German nationals to leave Syria, especially in humanitarian cases." Prosecution But "it is clearly not as easy as what has been put forward in the United States," Reuters reported German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas as saying Monday, ahead of a Brussels meeting with EU counterparts. "These people could only then come to Germany if we can ensure they are immediately put in custody. It's not clear to me how all that can be guaranteed." Prosecutions will face a number of hurdles, however, as it will be hard to obtain enough evidence against many of the ISIS supporters to secure convictions. The issue was highlighted in Britain's Parliament last year, when it was revealed that only one in 10 of all returned jihadists in the UK were prosecuted. Tonight terrorism minister @BWallaceMP finally revealed to me the number of returning British Jihadis who have been prosecuted - 40. Out of 400! So c.360 are free.<doc-sep>
The US-backed Syrian Democratic Force has almost captured the last Isis enclave in Syria. Is this the end of the Islamic State terrorist group? The US-backed Syrian Democratic Force has almost captured the last Isis enclave in Syria. Is this the end of the Islamic State terrorist group?... An Islamic State bride originally from the US, hopeful of returning to her home after fleeing to join the terrorist group, has had her request denied by the US Secretary of State and President Donald Trump. Speaking from a refugee camp in northern Syria, Hoda Muthana, 24, claimed she had been manipulated and said she was hopeful of being accepted back to the US. She suggested in an interview with the US ABC News yesterday that if she returned to America she could undergo therapy. Ms Muthana left her home in Hoover, Alabama, in 2014 after becoming radicalised. She was a rampant online propagandist for IS and part of a network of extremist young Muslims who shared their violent views on Twitter. During her time as an IS propagandist, Muthana’s urged her followers to commit murderous acts on US public holidays. “Go on drive-bys and spill all of their blood, or rent a big truck and drive all over them. Veterans, Patriot, Memorial etc Day parades. go on drive by’s + spill all of their blood or rent a big truck n drive all over them. Kill them,” she tweeted. She also called for an attack on former president Barack Obama. “You can look up Obamas schedule on the white house website. Take down that treacherous tyrant!” she wrote. She said she “can’t believe” she spread those views. “I interpreted everything very wrong,” she said. She said she and others like her were brainwashed and told things by members of IS that were “very wrong”. She explained a sickening process of pairing off IS brides with fighters, where young girls were coached to pick husbands from a list of photos. Her first husband was Australian jihadi and IS fighter Suhan Rahman, who was killed in battle. Her second husband was also killed fighting, and she married a third time but she no longer knows where her husband is. She said “200 other brides” of young ages, many teenagers, were put together in a locked room and shown pictures and advised on which husband to choose. “They keep you in Raqqa with locks on all the doors and windows with a guard in front of the door,” Ms Muthana explained. “At any time there would be about 200 people. Everyone just gave their preferences on who they’d like to marry and you were given a list and you could choose.” Ms Muthana said she was not a threat to the US, and had been indoctrinated by the extremist group. “I’m a normal human being who has been manipulated,” she said. “I hope America doesn’t think I am a threat to them and I hope they accept me … I hope they excuse me because of how young and ignorant I was. “I can tell them that now I have changed, now I am a mother, I have none of the ideology and hopefully everyone will see it when I get back.” She said she wanted to undergo a process back in the US to help her rehabilitate. “Maybe (I could undergo) therapy lessons, maybe a process that will ensure us that we’ll never do this again,” she said. British jihadi bride Shamima Begum also recently had her plea to return to her native home in the UK rejected. Ms Begum had made a public plea to return home after being found in a refugee camp in Syria by a journalist. Begum fled her home in Bethnal Green when she was 15, after becoming radicalised, and married at jihadi fighter suspected of carrying out attacks in the Netherlands. Her family received a letter from the British Home secretary informing them that the now 19-year-old’s citizenship had been cancelled. The rejection came after Begum had struggled to apologise for her actions in a damning interview, referring to the 2017 Manchester bombing of an Ariana Grande concert as “retaliation”. She explained that she thought attacks were a “two way street”. “It’s kind of retaliation. Their justification was ‘it’s retaliation’. So I thought, that’s a fair justification,” Ms Begum said when discussing the Manchester attacks.