ISIS Bride’s Jihadi Husband Insists It Was Her Choice to Marry Him at Age 15

ISIS bride Shamima Begum’s jihadi husband has surfaced in Syrian captivity and told reporters it was Begum’s “own choice” to marry him when she was just 15.

Yago Riedijk, 27, was interviewed in a Kurdish-run detention center in northern Syria by BBC Middle East correspondent Quentin Sommerville.

The journalist asked the ISIS extremist, “You were married to her when she was 15 years old; how in any way is that acceptable? You were, what, 23?”

Riedijk replied, “To be honest, when my friend came and said there was a girl who was interested in marriage, I wasn’t that interested because of her age, but I accepted the offer anyway.

“We sat down and she seemed in a good state of mind. It was her own choice, she was the one who asked to look for a partner for her. Then, I was invited and yeah, she was very young and it might have been better for her to wait a bit. But she didn’t, she chose to get married and I chose to marry her,” Riedijik continued.

Begum, who said she wants to return to the UK, has been stripped of her British citizenship. She has been moved to a different refugee camp in Syria following alleged death threats.

Her British-based lawyer, Tasnime Akunjee, told The Sun that she had left the camp “due to safety concerns around her and her baby.”

Riedijk, who surrendered to Syrian fighters and ended up in a detention center, faces a six-year jail term for joining a terror organization if he returns to the Netherlands. The jihadi was convicted in the summer of 2018 in absentia, according to the Evening Standard.

His Dutch citizenship hasn’t been revoked and he told the BBC he would like to return to the Netherlands with Begum and their newborn son.

‘Highly Damaged’

The mother of the remorseless Begum earlier expressed fears that her “highly damaged” daughter might brainwash her newborn son with ISIS propaganda.

Speaking through Akunjee, Begum’s mother, Asma, was cited by the British news outlet The Sun as saying that she wants her grandson to be taken away from Begum and brought to the UK because she “doesn’t want the grandchild indoctrinated.”

“Her mum doesn’t even recognize her,” Akunjee said, adding, “They’re eager to take the baby and bring him up as her situation is sorted.”

“Shamima is highly damaged and the family doesn’t want the newborn brought up by her in that state of mind,” he said.

After running away from London at the age of 15 to join the murderous jihadi cult, a heavily pregnant Begum surfaced in a refugee camp several weeks ago, pleading to be allowed back to Britain. She recently gave birth to a baby boy, whom she named Jerrah, which, according to the Mirror, in Arabic means “able fighter” or “one who wounds.”

Historian and author Tom Holland said in a tweet: “If she’d wanted to signal that she was returning to Britain in peace, she might have considered naming her baby after someone other than Abu Ubaidah ibn al-Jarrah.

“[He was] a general from the early days of the Arab conquests chiefly famed for beating the [expletive] out of infidels.”

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Shamima Begum, meanwhile, spoke to The Sunday Telegraph at the al-Hol camp in Syria, where she is staying with her newborn son, saying: “They are making an example of me. I regret speaking to the media. I wish I had stayed low and found a different way to contact my family. That’s why I spoke to the newspaper.”

She admitted, however, that she had benefited from extraordinary treatment at the camp due to the international exposure.

“They gave me my own tent. They’re being a bit nice to me right now because I’m all over the news.”

[caption id=“attachment_2800769” align=“alignnone” width=“600”] Renu, the eldest sister of Shamima Begum, holds her sister’s photo during a media interview at New Scotland Yard in London, on Feb. 22, 2015. (Laura Lean/PA Wire/Getty Images)[/caption]

‘No Regrets’

In recent interviews, a largely unrepentant Begum said that while she did not agree with everything the terror group had done, she has “no regrets” about joining ISIS and suggested that air strikes against the terror group in Syria somehow “justified” the Manchester Arena terror attack.

“It’s a two-way thing, really,” she told the BBC, adding that the suicide bomber that killed 22 people at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester was a “kind of retaliation” for bombardments of ISIS-held enclaves, adding, “So I thought, ok, that is a fair justification.”

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Asked about her take on the particularly graphic atrocities the jihadi extremists are known to have carried out, Begum told The Times of London that seeing “beheaded heads” in bins “did not faze her.” When asked by a Sky News reporter, “Did you know what Islamic State [ISIS] were doing when you left for Syria?”

“Because they had beheaded people. There were executions,” she replied, “Yeah, I knew about those things and I was okay with it.”

Begum also insisted that during her time with ISIS she was “just a housewife” and there was no evidence of her “doing anything dangerous.

‘Potentially Very Dangerous’

Security experts such as British intelligence service head Alex Younger have warned, however, that would-be returnees like Begum were “potentially very dangerous” because they were in “that sort of position,” people like her were likely to have acquired certain “skills or connections.”

Survivors and other victims of the murderous cult’s reign of terror, meanwhile, are furious at the prospect of ISIS women getting a sympathetic hearing in the Western press, or worse—a free pass.

Ali Y. Al-Baroodi, who survived ISIS’s bloody occupation of Mosul, told the Jerusalem Post that claims on the part of jihadi brides that they were “just housewives,” as Begum has insisted, are simply false.

“It was hell on Earth and every single one of them made it so,” he said, asking sarcastically if perhaps local victims of the jihadi women should “apologize for disturbing their stay there.”

“[ISIS] demolished cities and hundreds of mass graves, [and left] thousands of orphans and widows,” he added.

“It’s impossible to muster sympathy for her,” author and academic Idrees Ahmad wrote in reference to Begum, according to the Post. “She went to Syria as a colonizer, several months after ISIS beheaded journalists and aid workers.”