End this nightmare and let me come home, pleads Isil’s British ‘matchmaker’
THE British “Islamist matchmaker” who escaped a detention camp has said she wants to be given passage to Turkey and allowed back home, in an interview with The Daily Telegraph from a rebel “safe house” in northern Syria.
Tooba Gondal, 25, who is being held by Syrian rebel fighters close to the Turkish border, says she “wants her nightmare to end”, in her first interview since she fled from a Kurdish-run detention camp over the weekend.
“I want to go home, see my family,” the former Goldsmith’s, University of London student said via Whatsapp messages. “But if I am not able, I want to seek refuge in Turkey. After all these years, I’m tired, you know? Enough,” she said, from the outskirts of the town of Tel Abyad, which recently came under Turkish control.
She said she was being looked after by the rebels “much better than under the Kurds”, but had not been told what group was holding her.
Pictures she sent to The Telegraph showed fighters holding the banner of Ahrar al-sharqiya (Free Men of the East), an Islamist group fighting under the umbrella of the Syrian National Army (SNA) alongside Turkey.
Ms Gondal, from Walthamstow, east London, told how she managed to escape from Ain Issa camp with her two infant children on Sunday, along with hundreds of other foreign suspected Isil women in the largest prison break since Turkey launched its offensive last week.
“Distant bombing from Turkey got closer to our camp and it became more intense. The Kurdish military and guards and all of them fled and opened the gates,” she said.
“They said to the women, ‘Whoever wants to come with us, come.’ Whoever was stupid enough left with them – local Syrians and Iraqis who had been working with them.
“The foreigners mostly left: some had contacts with smugglers but we didn’t so we were literally abandoned, left to fend for ourselves under serious bombing.
“We then walked up the hill to a civilian camp close to the Daesh (Isil) one and that’s where most of the foreigners went. We found a resting spot and stayed there for a short period to figure out what to do.
“Then we heard the news that the Kurds had joined alliance with Bashar (President Assad) and the army was getting close to us so we literally ran through the desert and found a group of men who showed us a way.
“They said they were working with Turkey. We thought they’d give us to Turkey. That’s what we wanted, to get to Turkey and then go home.” She said she has been asking the rebel fighters since Monday to take her to the Turkish border – thought to be around 20 miles from her location – but they told her the road was blocked.
“They keep telling us that we are not prisoners, that we are free to go. But we aren’t allowed to leave right now,” she said. “I want Turkey and the UK to know where I am, to help me get out of here.”
The rebel group has not yet made Turkey aware they have the women, attempting instead to extort money in return for their safe passage.
It will likely have to hand them over to Turkish forces, which will take them over the border. From there, they could either be tried in Turkey or deported back to the UK – a scenario the Government has been keen to avoid.
Ms Gondal, who married and was widowed three times while living in Isil’s “caliphate”, was banned from reentering the UK last November by a Home Office exclusion order, but her son Ibrahim, three, is entitled to citizenship because of his British father.
However, her 18-month-old daughter Asiya’s late father was Russian. It is unclear if either she or her children would be assisted by the Government if they reach Turkey.
Ms Gondal, who had been one of the camp’s most infamous residents, has been accused of acting as an online recruiter and “matchmaker” for the terrorist group by luring women to Syria to marry Isil fighters. Among them was reportedly Shamima Begum, the Bethnal Green schoolgirl.
Ms Begum used social media to post images of herself wearing a burka and holding an assault rifle and in one message is thought to have praised the 2015 attacks on Paris.
In an open letter she released last month while she was still in Ain Issa camp, she claimed she deserved a second chance: “I admit to my online activities,” she said. “I did wrong, but I only did what I did behind the screen. I accept whatever the court says [if put on trial in the UK].
Ms Gondal told The Telegraph yesterday that she has been feeling unwell since she arrived at the safe house and said she has been put on a drip.
“The journey was tough, but alhamdulillah (thank God), the kids are good,” she said, sending a picture of Asiya playing in the dust in a dirty nappy.
She said she was in the same room as Lisa Smith, a former Irish soldier who converted to Islam and left for Syria in 2015, whom she said was “very stressed”.
The latest development will put pressure on the Government, which has so far refused to accept back any of its nationals held in Syria, citing the threat they pose to national security.
There are understood to be around 10 British men, 20 women and 30 children, currently detained in Kurdishrun camps and prisons around north-east Syria.
‘I want to go home, see my family. But if I am not able, I want to seek refuge in Turkey. I’m tired. Enough’