Jihadi bride killed by airstrike feared execution if she tried to f lee Syria
A BRITISH schoolgirl who joined Islamic State and died in an airstrike had been too scared to try to escape after another Western jihadi bride was executed for fleeing, her family say.
Kadiza Sultana, 17, who ran away from her home in London with two friends last year, became disillusioned with life under IS in Syria and told her family she was desperate to return to Britain.
She had been secretly planning to escape, but is said to have given up after Austrian Samra Kesinovic, also 17, was publicly beaten to death with a hammer for trying to leave Syria. Samra, who became an IS poster girl after joining in 2014, was used as a sex slave before being executed last year as a warning to other Westerners in the terror group.
Kadiza, from Bethnal Green in east London, died in May when her home in Syria received a direct hit from a bomb dropped during a Russian airstrike. The straight-A student is thought to be the first British female member of IS to die.
The death of Kadiza, who was brainwashed online, has renewed criticism of the Government for failing to crack down on the radicalisation of British Muslims.
Kadiza’s friends Shamima Begum and Amira Abase, who were both 15 when they travelled to Syria with her, are thought to be still alive. But a counter-extremism expert said yesterday they would never be allowed to leave IS alive.
Kadiza’s family’s lawyer Tasnime Akunjee said: ‘If IS were to detect and capture you, their punishment was quite brutal for trying to leave.
‘In the week Kadiza was thinking about these issues, a young Austrian girl who had been caught trying to leave IS territory was by all reports beaten to death publicly.
‘I think Kadiza took that as a bad omen and decided not to take the risk. It terrified her as she was scared she could be caught and the same thing happen to her. She was scared of losing her life.’
Asked why she wanted to leave, Mr Akunjee told BBC Newsnight: ‘She found out quite quickly the propaganda doesn’t match up with the reality. The only positive in this horrible affair is that ... one hopes it would dissuade others from taking the same course.’
Kadiza’s sister Halima Khanom, 26, has confirmed her death. During strained phone calls to her family, Kadiza admitted she had ‘zero’ chance of escaping because it was impossible to cross the border. Her hopes were further diminished after Samra’s death.
Kadiza was just 16 when she reached Syria in February 2015 after flying from Gatwick to Turkey during half term with her friends. The schoolgirls, from Bethnal Green Academy, initially embraced their new life and married jihadis.
Kadiza married an American IS fighter of Somali origin, who was killed while fighting the Russian-backed Syrian forces.
But she became disillusioned with life in the terror group’s de-facto capital of Raqqa.
Samra had fled her home in Vienna with friend Sabina Selimovic, 15, in 2014 after being brainwashed by Bosnian Islamist preacher Ebu Tejma.
They left a note for their families that read: ‘No point lookd- ing for us. See you in paradise. We will serve Allah and we will die for him.’ They were pictured in burqas holding Kalashnikovs in an IS propaganda photo. Sabina is thought to have been killed in 2014.
Yesterday Haras Rafiq, of counterextremism think-tank the Quilliam Founthey said the surviving two British schoolgirls have little chance of escape, saying: ‘Once you are in, they don’t let you out. Nobody can leave.’
He added that the only way to leave would be to find someone sympathetic to help them reach the border.
The schoolgirls are among more than 800 Britons believed to have left the UK to join IS.
It is thought at least 250 have since returned. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe told MPs last year it was unlikely the girls would be prosecuted if returned unless there was evidence they had committed specific crimes.
The Government has faced fierce criticism over it failure to halt radicalisation. Critics claim the Prevent strategy, introduced in the wake of the July 7, 2005 bombings in London to stop youths being brainwashed, has been an expensive flop.
Rushanara Ali, Labour MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, yesterday told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Kadiza’s death should lead to a full review of Prevent. She said she has ‘huge concerns’ about the way Prevent is implemented and about young Muslims being ‘stigmatised’.