‘Shamima is not a danger – all she did was sit in the house for three years’
Dutch jihadist fighter defends his British bride and says he wants to take her to live in Netherlands
SHAMIMA BEGUM’S jihadist husband has claimed she has done nothing but “sit in the house” for the past three years as he revealed he wants them to live a normal family life in the Netherlands.
Yago Riedijk, 27, a Dutch Islamic State fighter, is being held at a Kurdishrun detention centre in northern Syria.
In a BBC interview, he admitted fighting for the terror group but said he now wants to live “a moderate Muslim life” with his 19-year-old British wife and their newborn son in his native country.
He claimed Ms Begum posed no danger to the public and defended his decision to marry her when she was just 15, days after her arrival in Syria having fled her family home in Bethnal Green, east London, to join Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).
“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,” he said.
“But I accepted the offer anyway and we sat down and she seemed in a good state of mind.”
Riedijk insisted: “It was her own choice. She was the one who asked to look for a partner for her, then I was invited. Yes, she was very young, maybe it would have been better for her to wait a bit. But she didn’t, she chose to get married and I chose to marry her.”
Riedijk said his young bride was shy and anti-social when they met, according to the BBC’S Quentin Sommerville. She rarely left the house, and never discussed the terror attacks in Europe or elsewhere. “I don’t understand how she would, in any form, be a danger,” he said. “All she did was she sat in the house for three years.”
Riedijk claimed he had kept his wife “in a protected shell” and that she was unaware of the dangers he faced outside. “She was just sitting inside taking care of the household while I was trying to get by,” he said. “Feed her, feed myself. Try to keep out of trouble. Try to not get killed by secret services.”
Ms Begum has described having seen a severed head in a bin and how she had survived bombing raids. But her husband painted what Middle East correspondent Sommervile described as a “darker picture” of life with Isil, seeing piles of corpses of murdered prisoners.
Riedijk suggested he had once taken part in a stoning, revealing: “Actually, she wasn’t stoned to death. She stood up and she ran away. It’s not allowed to throw the stones after she gets up and runs away. So we stopped throwing stones at her and she escaped.”
He fought in Aleppo and was injured fighting in Kobani. He reportedly revealed that he was imprisoned in Raqqa and tortured after extremists accused him of being a Dutch spy.
Riedijk and Ms Begum escaped the last remaining Isil stronghold of Baghouz as the caliphate crumbled but were separated and have had no contact for several weeks. He said his parents sent him money to escape.
Riedijk, a convert to Islam, grew up in a middle-class family home in Arnhem
‘She was just sitting inside taking care of the household while I was trying to get by. Feed her, feed myself’
but was radicalised online and moved to Syria to join Isil in October 2014.
He faces a six-year jail term if he does return to the Netherlands after being convicted in his absence of joining Isil last July. He is also suspected by police of being involved in a terrorist plot in the country.
The Dutch authorities suggested yesterday that they would not help any jihadists who wanted to return and that Riedijk would be arrested if he sets foot on native soil.
Last month, Ms Begum begged the British authorities to rescue her from the al-hol refugee camp in northern Syria where she has recently given birth to her third child. But instead, her citizenship was revoked by Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary.
She is understood to have been transferred to a different camp within the past few days for her own safety after she gave multiple interviews to journalists.