ISIS BRIDE: LET US COME HOME
We track down the Irish ex-soldier and her daughter in a Syrian camp. Don’t miss this extraordinary interview
bride Lisa Smith this week made a plea to be returned home to Ireland with her two-year-old child. She says she made a mistake travelling to the Islamic State and has nothing to hide.
Ms Smith, whose identity our interview confirms for the first time, and her young daughter appeared in good health when interviewed exclusively in the Al Hawl refugee camp on the Iraq border in Syria. Al Hawl is a sprawling desert camp designed to house 10,000 Iraqi refugees, and now home to about 76,000 people, many who fled from the last Isis enclave in Baghouz. Yet despite video confirming that Isis relied on female fighters in its dying days, Ms Smith, a former private in the Irish Defence Forces from Dundalk, denies she had ever owned or used a gun while in the Islamic State.
She insists she did not train anybody in military tactics, although she accepts that she attended one training session – which she claims prompted her to remember her own military training.
However, she confirms she had married British Jihadist Sajid Aslam, whose Northern
Irish first wife was jailed for two-and-a-half years after her attempts to reach the Islamic State were foiled.
Ms Smith was circumspect when asked directly if her second husband, who she says died within the past three months, had been involved in fighting. She would only admit that he had taken a snipers’ course and that he had spent a number of periods of time away from her.
The Irish Mail on Sunday can also reveal that a second Irish citizen, a child, is believed to be in the camps.
According to the child’s mother the young boy has Irish citizenship through his father and his mother is an Irish resident. The child has been in the Al Hawl camp for several weeks and is believed to be of concern to the Irish Government which is trying to establish the precise number of children currently in the volatile foreigner section of the camp.
Asked about her feelings towards Ireland, Ms Smith says: ‘For me, I want to go back to my country. For why I want to go back to my country?
‘Obviously if people are good, you know, and they treat you right and they smile at you, you know.
‘You walk down the streets of Dublin, or you walk down the streets of anywhere in Ireland, they’ll say, “How are you?” Or an old man will get up and let you sit down or sit down and talk to you. People generally have good manners.’
Asked about potential accusations that she is an unfit mother for travelling to the Islamic State, she says: ‘But I wasn’t a mother when I left, I came as a single person and I thought if I died here, I died, but when I had a child I became different, you know.
‘You have to take your child and look after your child, you know. She’s my number one priority now that’s why I want to leave and take her home with me and get her educated. People here are not educated.’
Asked directly if she had fought, Ms Smith says: ‘No, I didn’t do anything, I never even owned a rifle when I was in Dowla [Arabic for ‘state’] (laughs), I didn’t even own a gun. I, my husband many times said to me, you want me to buy you one? I said no. He said it’s just for self-defence or, I said I don’t want, I don’t want.
‘I think anyone that knows me, you know in the army or outside the army or anywhere in my life, will know that, they know me, that I wouldn’t pick up the weapon and fight and stuff like that. I didn’t do it, I didn’t own a rifle, I didn’t teach them anything.
‘There was actually women, teach their husbands like how to have classes, you know, of how to use the gun, how to do this, how to do that.
‘I went to one class just to see how the woman was teaching, you know. Just to see what the woman was teaching, and she reminded me of what I used to know because I forgot everything, you know. But I didn’t fight ... I didn’t fight in Baghouz, I just took me and my child and got out of there all the time.
‘The only thing for me what I can do anyway is just live my life the way I live it, in my own home, with my daughter, and bring my daughter up.
‘I don’t want to cause problems for anyone, I don’t want to mix, I’m still me, I’m still like a good neighbour, I’m still a good friend, I’m just still me. I’m not, like, out to kill anyone, I don’t believe in suicide attacks.’
Asked if she thought her daughter would be stigmatised by her birth in the Islamic State, Ms Smith says: ‘No, by the time that comes, she gets bigger, things will be forgotten about, they always are. Life goes on and new stories, new things keep happening.
‘You never know, one year later maybe something else is going to happen, maybe the Islamic State will rise again from a different area.’
Asked whether she would travel again to such a state, she insists: ‘No, never, never, never. My biggest mistake is not having patience and seeing with my eyes to what was going to happen.
‘I just ran, ran with the crowd like I always do. Ask my mum, I run with the crowd all the time. And that’s what I did. I didn’t listen to anyone, I didn’t take any advice, I just ran. And I wish I didn’t. I wish I had just took my time.’
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, speaking when the presence of an Irish citizen in the Syrian camp was first confirmed, told the MoS: ‘There are a couple of things that need to be examined now: a) Does she want to come home? Maybe she doesn’t. b) Do the Syrians want to put her on trial? c) We have to perform a security assessment as to whether she is a threat to us.
‘And finally, we have to determine it is actually her.’
Asked whether she felt she should be put on trial, Ms Smith says: ‘I don’t think I should be tried because like, okay, if they want to put an investigation on me, they can. I have nothing to hide.
‘The only thing I did was come here, so if that’s my crime for coming here and realising that I made a mistake and, for me, I can’t get out, I couldn’t get out so I know what they see is bad.
‘I see from their point of view, they look in and see the videos, they see what’s propagated on the news.
‘They see this, they see that, they hear the stories.
‘Of course, anyone would think this person’s a psycho but to be honest what you seen is not how we lived, we lived very normal lives like back home.’
‘When I had a child I became different’ ‘I just ran with the crowd, like always’