Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
‘Towie jihadi’: I know I never should have gone to Syria
Mum says she has been deradicalised
A Towie-loving mum who was the first British woman to be convicted of Islamic State membership claims to have been deradicalised.
Tareena Shakil, 32, was jailed in the UK in 2016 after taking her toddler son to Syria and joining the terror group.
She was released two years later and now insists she no longer poses a threat to Britain.
A judge said Shakil travelled to war-torn Syria “to produce the next generation of fighters”.
She said: “It’s not something I’m happy about looking back.”
The former school prefect claims she was deradicalised by the East London-based Active Change Foundation.
She was filmed during the process for an ITV programme last night and said she wishes she could turn back the clock.
Shakil secretly went to Raqqa after telling her family she was going on a short break.
She said: “If I could go back I would have come back, I would have gone to Turkey on holiday.
“Being aware of horrific things happening in that place and still deciding to run away, not just on your own, with your child… I understand that is hard for people to understand.
“And to just say you didn’t pay that much attention to it, but that’s what it was, I just... I didn’t. It’s easy for everybody to say, ‘She did this, she did that.’
“But you really have no idea what I was living through.”
Shakil, from Burton-on-trent, Staffs, was jailed for six years at Birmingham crown court.
The Spice Girls fan was also found guilty of encouraging terrorism on social media.
Asked what she thinks about ISIS bride Shamima Begum, who has lost her British citizenship and is in a Syrian camp, Shakil said: “I can’t sit here and say, ‘No, don’t bring them back’.
“Because that makes me a hypocrite because I’ve been in a very similar situation.
“It’s not the same because I escaped. It’s not easy to escape. It takes strength, it takes courage. It’s life and death.”
Once in Syria, she dressed her son in Isis-branded clothing and taught him to say “Allahu Akbar” – God is great.
She posed for photos wearing a balaclava, brandished AK47S and handguns and said she wanted to “die as a martyr”.
Shakil said her son, who cannot be named, snubbed her when first released from prison.
She revealed: “I would kiss him, he’d wipe the kiss off.
“We’ve gone from that to a really good relationship.”
If I could go back I would have come back, I’d have gone to Turkey on holiday TAREENA SHAKIL ON REGRETS ABOUT TRAVELLING TO SYRIA