Horrors of life under IS
> Militant’s bride describes ‘Little Britain’ in Raqqa
DAMASCUS: An Islamic State (IS) fighter’s wife has revealed the horrors of the life of jihadi brides under the so-called caliphate after she was forced into Syria by her husband.
Islam Mitat, 23-year-old mother of two, said her life was turned around when her husband of three years, Ahmed, forced her to go to live in the IS bastion of Raqqa in Syria, where he became a jihadi fighter.
Originally from Morocco, Mitat – who used to be a physics student and keen fashion blogger – discovered life in “Little Britain” within the caliphate.
Speaking to The Sunday Times from a safe house in northern Syria, she revealed how she set up home with teenage British twins, Zahra and Salma Halane, who ran away from their Manchester home in 2014.
Three schoolgirls from Bethnal Green, east London – Kadiza Sultana, Amira Abase and Shamima Begum – also lived in the house, along with other jihadist brides from Bristol and Glasgow.
She also met Sally Jones – the “White Widow” from Kent – a former punk singer who is now one of the most wanted female terrorists in the world.
Mitat said the militants were delighted to read about themselves in online British news sites and that they “looked happy” about the terrorist attacks in Europe.
Shortly after her arrival in Syria, her husband was killed in the battle of Kobane and a few months later her son Abdullah, now two, was born.
She told the paper that she had met him on a Muslim dating website. He told her they had to go to Turkey because of his work. Instead, she was forced to illegally cross into Syria.
After his death, she was married to a German Afghan fighter who banned her from leaving the house and seeing her friends, dashing her dream of fleeing.
She managed to divorce him but was remarried to an Australian fighter known as Abu Abdallah al-Afghani.
Despite her situation, encounters with Yazidi sex slaves made her realise her situation could be worse.
Witnessing them being regularly beaten, she said IS militants used them as “a bit of fun”. Her attempts to buy freedom for one of them was thwarted when she did not have enough money.
As the caliphate found itself under mounting military pressure, she witnessed the horrors of war first-hand.
She said she witnessed mutilated bodies of so-called traitors hanging and after an air strike, her street was filled with mutilated bodies.
“It was hard to see someone next to you killed,” she said. – The Independent