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`I was a victim of ISIS’: Alabama woman who joined ISIS, married three fighters and called on extremists to ‘spill blood of Americans’ asks to be allowed to return to US from Syrian camp after Obama stripped her citizenship
- Hoda Muthana, 28, claims she was trafficked to Syria to join ISIS in 2014
- Muthana has tweeted out calls to extremism and was pictured with a group of women with rifles and an ISIS flag
- She says those tweets were sent out by someone in her group home
- She says she now hopes to return home, but her citizenship was stripped by former President Barack Obama
In a rare interview from the Roj detention camp in Syria, Hoda Muthana said she was 'brainwashed' by online traffickers into joining the group in 2014 and regrets everything except her young son, now of pre-school age.
She says she is a 'victim' of the terrorist group, just like those who were beheaded and who lost friends and family members,
'Of course I regret coming here,' the 28-year-old told The News Movement. 'If I could take it back I would do it in a heartbeat.'
She has previously claimed that tweets inciting violence against former President Barack Obama were actually sent by jihadis who stole her phone.
Following those calls for violence, Obama stripped her of her citizenship, and the United States government has repeatedly denied her requests to return home.
- Hoda Muthana, 28, insisted in a recent interview she was brainwashed into joining ISIS as she says she hopes to one day return to the United States
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Muthana, who joined ISIS at the age of 20 and married three fighters, has repeatedly claimed she is a victim of the terrorist organization.
But at the height of the extremists' power, she had voiced enthusiastic support for them on social media and in an interview with BuzzFeed News.
The ISIS bride from Alabama who wants to go home
Hoda Muthana has been trying to get back into the US for years without success.In January this year, Supreme Court justices refused to hear her appeal to be allowed back.
The justices declined without comment on to the appeal of the Yemeni diplomat's daughter.
Muthana left the U.S. to join the Islamic State in 2014, apparently after becoming radicalized online.
While she was overseas the government determined she was not a U.S. citizen and revoked her passport, citing her father's status as a Yemeni diplomat at the time of her birth. Her family sued to enable her return to the United States.
A federal judge ruled in 2019 that the U.S. government correctly determined Muthana wasn't a U.S. citizen despite her birth in the country.
Children of diplomats aren't entitled to birthright citizenship. The family´s lawyers appealed, arguing that her father's status as a diplomat assigned to the U.N. had ended before her birth, making her automatically a citizen.
The decision to revoke her passport was made under former President Barack Obama.
The case gained widespread attention as former President Donald Trump tweeted about it, saying he had directed the secretary of state not to allow her back into the country.
She told reporter Ellie Hall at the time that it is the duty of all true Muslims to join her and wage war on the West.
Muthana also used Twitter under the name 'Umm Jihad' and the handle @ZumarulJannah.
On March 19, 2015, that account shared statements encouraging followers in the US to attack parades on national holidays and 'spill all of their blood or rent a big truck n (sic) drive all over them. Kill them'.
Another tweet posted on the same day read 'You can look up Obamas schedule on the white house (sic) website. Take down that treacherous tyrant!'.
Muthana was also tagged in photos posted on Twitter with women clad in burkas holding rifles and ISIS flags. She later confirmed to Buzzfeed that she was one of the women in the photo.
By January 2016 the Obama administration revoked her passport and just last year, the US Supreme Court declined an appeal against that decision.
But, she has denied that she sent those tweets,
'I never had a platform to say this, but I have always been trying to tell people that those tweets were not mine,' the former ISIS bride said recently.
'It either gets cut out of the media or it gets kind of butchered somehow and I never get a platform.
'It's not fair, the person that did bring me here had a wife who I become (sic) friends with.
'There was a group of us in a home and she would take our phones.
'She would take our phones and tell us because we've always thought about going back to our countries that we need to make ourselves look bad in the media so we don't have this persuasion to go back.
'That's basically what her agenda was, that's what their (ISIS) agenda is, that they have to portray you in the worst way so that you don't have these thoughts of ever wanting to return.
'She just took my phone and I thought she was just looking through my diary or something and then when she left and I looked through and I saw a bunch of evil horrible tweets that I would never have done because I wanted to stay off media, I never wanted to get myself out there you know.
'It was not only me that she did it to, it was several people and they were made to look really bad also.'
- Muthana was raised in a conservative Muslim household in Hoover, Alabama, just outside Birmingham
- This photo of female jihadis waving the ISIS flag was found on a now-deactivated Twitter account which reportedly belonged to Muthana. She later confirmed she was in the picture
'One of the worst feelings I ever had was someone telling me I wasn't an American citizen,' Muthana told The News Movement, adding that she still disagrees with the ruling.
She claimed that many of the other Americans who joined ISIS were charged with terrorism, and said that she will serve time in an American prison if she can return to the United States.
But, she said: 'I'm hoping my government looks at me as someone young at the time and naïve.'
And once she leaves Syria, she says she 'will be an advocate against this,' noting once again: 'I as well, I'm a victim.'
- Muthana (pictured in 2019) said she had no knowledge of the tweets and believed they were sent out to prevent her being able to go home
In 2014, she told her family she was going on a school trip but flew to Turkey and crossed into Syria instead, funding the travel with tuition checks that she had secretly cashed.
The Obama administration cancelled her citizenship in 2016, saying her father was an accredited Yemeni diplomat at the time she was born — a rare revocation of birthright citizenship. Her lawyers have disputed that move, arguing that the father's diplomatic accreditation ended before she was born.
But the Trump administration maintained that she was not a citizen and barred her from returning, even as it pressed European allies to repatriate their own detained nationals to reduce pressure on the detention camps.
U.S. courts have sided with the government on the question of Muthana's citizenship, and last January the Supreme Court declined to consider her lawsuit seeking re-entry.
That has left her and her son languishing in a detention camp in northern Syria housing thousands of widows of Islamic State fighters and their children.
Muthana described life at the prison to The News Movement as 'basically the same day on repeat for four years — the only change is your child growing.'
- Muthana, pictured with her son several years ago, said the tweets were sent out by a woman in their group who had confiscated all of their phones
- In February 2019 Trump Tweeted: 'I have instructed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and he fully agrees, not to allow Hoda Muthana back into the Country!'
Women accused of affiliation with IS and their minor children are largely housed in the al-Hol and Roj camps, under what the rights group described as 'life threatening conditions.' The camp inmates include more than 37,400 foreigners, among them Europeans and North Americans.
Human Rights Watch and other monitors have cited dire living conditions in the camps, including inadequate food, water and medical care, as well as the physical and xesual abuse of inmates by guards and fellow detainees.
Kurdish-led authorities and activists have blamed IS sleeper cells for surging violence within the facilities, including the beheading of two Egyptian girls, aged 11 and 13, in al-Hol camp in November.
Turkish airstrikes targeting the Kurdish groups launched that month also hit close to al-Hol. Camp officials alleged that the Turkish strikes were targeting security forces guarding the camp.
'None of the foreigners have been brought before a judicial authority ... to determine the necessity and legality of their detention, making their captivity arbitrary and unlawful,' Human Rights Watch wrote. 'Detention based solely on family ties amounts to collective punishment, a war crime.'
Calls to repatriate the detainees were largely ignored in the immediate aftermath of IS' bloody reign, which was marked by massacres, beheadings and other atrocities, many of which were broadcast to the world in graphic films circulated on social media.
But with the passage of time, the pace of repatriations has started to pick up. Human Rights Watch said some 3,100 foreigners - mostly women and children - have been sent home over the past year.
Most were Iraqis, who comprise the majority of detainees, but citizens were also repatriated to Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia and the United Kingdom.
The U.S. has repatriated a total of 39 American nationals. It's unclear how many other Americans remain in the camps.
- She has repeatedly said she is a victim of the Islamic State terrorist organization
- She claims she was 'trafficked' to Syria by jihadis playing on her faith in 2014
Speaking with TNM, she doubles down on her claim that she was trafficked to Syria, saying the jihadis she spoke with online played on her religion and her desire to leave Alabama, where she says she was 'physically abused.'
'Someone who is God-fearing and afraid of missing out on all the obligations will end up listening to something like this,' she said.
When she arrived in Syria in 2014, Muthana says she was detained in a guest house reserved for unmarried women and children.
- Hoda's first husband was Australian extremist Suhan Abdul Rahman who was killed in battle in Syria
The only way to escape was to marry a fighter. She eventually married and remarried three times. Her first two husbands, including the father of her son, were killed in battle. She reportedly divorced her third husband.
By 2018, Muthana said she left the terrorist group with her child.
'When I left ISIS territory I was very excited,' she said in the interview. 'I thought it was the start of my new life.'
But Muthana says she still has to be careful about what she says because of fear of reprisal, as ISIS forces continue to carry out sporadic attacks and has supporters in the camps themselves.
'Even here, right now, I can´t fully say everything I want to say. But once I do leave, I will. I will be an advocate against this,' she said
'I wish I can help the victims of ISIS in the West understand that someone like me is not part of it, that I as well am a victim of ISIS.'
Hassan Shibly, an attorney who has assisted Muthana´s family, said it is 'absolutely clear that she was brainwashed and taken advantage of.'
He said her family wishes she could come back, pay her debt to society and then help others from 'falling into the dark path that she was led down.'
'She was absolutely misguided, and no one is denying that. But again, she was a teenager who was the victim of a very sophisticated recruitment operation that focuses on taking advantage of the young, the vulnerable, the disenfranchised,' he said.
Source:https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...-woman-joined-IS-hopes-return-Syria-camp.html
