British girl who f led to become an IS bride is killed in Syria
ONE of the three British schoolgirls who ran away to become Islamic State jihadi brides has been killed by a Russian airstrike, her sister said last night.
Kadiza Sultana, who fled during a half-term break, is understood have died when her home in Syria received a direct hit from a bomb.
The 17-year-old is thought to be the first British female member of IS to die since the ‘caliphate’ began.
Kadiza was just 16 when she reached Syria in February 2015 after flying from Gatwick to Turkey with her 15-year-old friends Shamima Begum and Amira Abase.
Last year, Glaswegian so-called jihadi bride Aqsa Mahmood, 21, denied recruiting the three girls.
The pupils from Bethnal Green Academy in East London, who
‘Impossible to cross border’
were radicalised by IS propaganda on the internet, initially embraced their new life and agreed to marry jihadi fighters. But Kadiza became disillusioned with life in the terror group’s de-facto capital of Raqqa and told her family she was desperate to get back to Britain.
During strained phone calls to the family home, she admitted she had ‘zero’ chance of escaping as it was impossible to cross the border. Trying to leave IS was ‘like trying to escape from Alcatraz, with a shoot to kill order added in’, said the family’s lawyer Tasnime Akunjee.
Her sister Halima Khanom, 26, last night confirmed Kadiza had been killed by a Russian airstrike in May. She told ITV News: ‘We were expecting this in a way. But at least we know she is in a better place.’
In a phone call before her death, Kadiza told her sister: ‘I don’t have a good feeling. I feel scared.’
Asked why she felt scared, she replied: ‘You know if something goes wrong, that’s it. I will never be with you.
‘You know the borders are closed right now, so how am I going to get out? I am not going to go through [Kurdish] territory to come out. I am never going to do that, ever.’
Her sister, a projects coordinator at the Imperial War Museum, then asked her how confident she felt about getting out, to which Kadiza replied: ‘Zero’.
Kadiza then asks to speak to their mother, but the call ends before she gets the chance.
Speaking after the phone call, Halima said: ‘She sounds very terrified. She did get very emotional as well. I feel really helpless. What can I do? It’s really hard.
‘I don’t think she’s ever made a choice by herself. That was the first one and a very big one. I just look forward to the next call and that’s what keeps me going.
‘Things have changed. The way she used to communicate with me, the way she used to talk about things has totally changed. She’s scared of being there.’
This was one of the final calls Kadiza made before being killed. Her family then received a phone call from someone in Syria telling them she had died.
The three girls, who were all straight A students, were pictured by airport cameras before getting into a car in Turkey to cross the border into Syria. They were unprepared for the reality of life in a war zone and had little experience of living permanently veiled and under the strict regime.
Kadiza married an American IS fighter of Somali origin, who was killed while fighting the Russianbacked Syrian forces.
Several months after arriving, the three girls were trained for ‘special missions’ – prompting fears they were to be used as suicide bombers.
Kadiza’s death has sparked fears over the safety of her two friends and another pupil from Bethnal Green Academy. Sharmeena Begum, who is not related to Shamima but was friends with the girls, fled to Syria two months before her fellow pupils joined her.
The 17-year-old is also believed to have married an IS fighter and her father Mohammad Uddin said he was shocked and deeply worried by the news.
He said: ‘Do you know anything about my daughter? I have had no contact with her. I last heard from her two or three months ago when she texted me to say she was okay.
‘Obviously, the news about Kadiza makes me very worried. If this has happened to one of the other girls, it could have happened to my daughter as well. I’m shocked.’
The Bethnal Green schoolgirls are among more than 800 Britons who have left the UK to join IS, including Mahmood, who left her family in Pollokshields in 2013.
It is thought at least 250 have since returned. Some have faced prosecution, with others kept under the watch of security services.
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan Howe told MPs last year that it was unlikely the girls would be prosecuted if they returned to Britain unless there was evidence they had committed specific crimes.