Give jihadi convert a chance says Scots dad
THE Scottish father of a white Muslim convert who is feared to have joined Islamic State after being groomed online pleaded last night for his daughter to be given a ‘second chance’.
John Brown, a former paratrooper in the British Army, revealed that he had not heard from daughter Natalie Bracht for several years and said he was desperate for her to come home.
His plea comes as it was reported as many as 80 women and children, including members of the UK’s biggest suspected female terror cell, are expected to return imminently after being captured in Syria following the defeat of IS.
Others will return by the end of the year, one of the women told relatives, as the terror group’s so-called caliphate is razed to the ground.
The cell is believed to include Bracht, two sisters from east London, and an IT graduate whose mother works in the NHS. It is linked to some of the world’s most infamous terrorists, according to a Sunday Times investigation.
Mr Brown, 80, was shocked when reporters told him last week that Bracht is believed to have become the second wife of Celso Rodrigues Da Costa, an Isis fighter from London.
Bracht, who police say suffers from a personality disorder, is thought to be among a group of
‘We have forgiven her’
Western women held in Kurdish-controlled camps in Syria.
In her last dramatic phone call home, Bracht had told her parents she was in Budapest, Hungary, with Muslims who had taken away her passport. She was with three of her seven children at the time. The fate of her three children remains unclear.
‘She sounded scared,’ Obanborn Mr Brown told the paper. ‘She told me, “Please pick me up, I’m on my way to the Aus- trian border. If they find me they’ll kill me”.’ Hungary is part of an overland route used by many jihadists.
Bracht holds dual BritishGerman citizenship after the marriage of her Scots-born father to her German mother. She grew up in Germany, where her Christian parents now live, but later moved to the UK.
In 2008, she hit the headlines when she ran away from her home in Sunderland with her then five daughters, fearing they were to be taken into care. It sparked an international hunt and the group were captured on CCTV in London wearing Muslim clothes. Bracht was later arrested in Munich where her daughters, then aged five to 13, were removed from her care.
The desperate phone call from Hungary might suggest Bracht was forced to travel against her will, but her parents – who have been estranged from her since her teenage years – claim she is also ‘full of fantasy’.
‘She’s very clever,’ said Mr Brown. ‘She could brainwash other people.’ Nevertheless, he is still keen for her to make contact and for Bracht to be allowed back to Europe to start afresh. ‘We have forgiven her,’ he said. ‘I’m still her father and the door is always open. Everybody deserves a second chance.’
Last night security sources told the Mail that only as many as five women were actually being held in Kurdish custody. Others are planning to return because they believe Britain will let them in as they did not engage in terrorist activities.