Beginning in 2012, dozens of girls and women traveled to Iraq and Syria to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), becoming brides of ISIL fighters. While some traveled willingly, others were brought to Iraq and Syria as minors by their parents or family.[1][2]
Many of those women subsequently acquired high public profiles, either through their efforts to recruit more volunteers, when they died or because they recanted and wished to return to their home countries. Commentators have noted that it will be hard to differentiate between the women who played an active role in atrocities and those who were stay-at-home housewives.[3]
Women who travelled to travel to Iraq or Syria to become an ISIL bride
Name
Birth year
Date of joining
Status
Home country
Notes
Zagidat Abakarova
1985
2014
Repatriated to Russia in 2017, given a suspended sentence
She was later found in Al-Hawl refugee camp, expressing a desire to return to Australia[13]
Due to her ties to ISIL, she was stripped of her Australian citizenship in 2020, which created friction in Australia-New Zealand relations.[14]
In February 2021, she was detained by Turkish authorities while trying to enter the country with her two children.[15][16][17] The Turkish Government subsequently dropped charges against her and began proceedings to deport her.[18]
In late Jul 2021, New Zealand Prime MinisterJacinda Ardern announced that the New Zealand Government would repatriate Aden and her children on the basis of their New Zealand citizenship.[19] She and her children arrived in New Zealand on mid–August 2021.[20]
Was able to travel to Daesh territory with her husband, Khaled Sharrouf, even though his passport had been cancelled due to an earlier conviction for terrorism.[62]
The couple brought their five children with them.
Sharrouf and two of their five children died from the same drone attack in 2017.
Brought to Daesh territory by her parents Tara Nettleton and Khaled Sharrouf at the age of thirteen,[62] at which age she was married to Mohammed Elomar, a jihadi fighter and her father's best friend.[65] On June 24, 2019, it was reported she had been repatriated to Australia, also rescued with her two children, age 2 and 3.[66]
Later gave birth in 2019 to a child fathered by her second husband, his fate is unknown[67]
Commanded "the Islamic State's Al-Khansaa Brigade, an all-female detachment that polices the group's strictures against wearing makeup or showing bare skin."[110]
Divorced her husband so he was able to take a second wife while living in Finland
Emigrated from Kotka, Finland to Manbij to join her husband and his second wife
Travelled with her four children, the eldest, a daughter born in 2005–2006, was married in Syria aged 13. The youngest was born in Syria.
Claimed her first husband died in a car accident, remarried after his death, second wife was returned to Finland after being arrested attempting to travel to Georgia
During the fall of ISIL in 2019, Sanna was interviewed by CNN near the final stronghold of Baghouz. As of 6March2019[update], she was in a refugee camp and wanted to return to Finland.
After the interview was published on 6 March 2019, Sanna's story was widely covered by Finnish media, starting a public discussion in Finland on possible return of Finnish citizens who emigrated to the ISIL war zone in Iraq and Syria.
With the help of Finnish authorities, she later was returned from the al-Hawl refugee camp to Finland with four children with her. Also a Finnish-Somali woman returned to Finland with two of her children on the same flight.[117]
Her father says she only travelled to Daesh-occupied Syria to find out what happened to her late husband.[131] Her family claims that once she arrived in Daesh territory, she was forced into marriage with a jihadi fighter.
Once married to a jihadi fighter, she made social media posts that seemed to support the Daesh regime.[132]
She has criticied Daesh's inability to provide health care, including pre-natal and obstetrics care.[133]
Reportedly killed in an airstrike with her children at some point before 2020[134]
Dabboussy says her husband tricked her into traveling to the Turkish-Syrian border with a claim they were going to help one of his relatives escape Syria, only to force her to cross the border, at gunpoint.[138][126]
Had three children, forced to remarry twice after her first husband's death[139]
Hafsa's father, Amor Sliti, took her mother, Hafsa, and her four younger siblings to Afghanistan, in 2000.[143] Her mother, Christine Volcke, fled, leaving Hafsa and her siblings with her father. Her father agreed to marry her to a member of the Taliban, when she was just 13 years old, and she bore him a child. After the American invasion of Afghanistan, in the fall of 2001, her husband ended up in the Guantanamo detention camp, and Hafsa, her father and her siblings ended up in an Iranian refugee camp. They were deported back to Belgium in February 2002. Hafsa and her siblings were put in the care of Volcke, her mother, while her father was tried and convicted of terrorism charges.
Her father was stripped of Belgian citizenship, and deported to Tunisia in 2010.[143] He traveled to the newly established Islamic State, Daesh, where he worked in the tax department. Hafsa joined him, in 2015. She married a jihadi fighter, and bore another child. She says that by 2017 she and her father had grown disillusioned with the brutality and corruption of the Daesh regime. She says they made three escape attempts, and that her father was shot and killed on the third attempt.
Hafsa says she is not a threat, and would prefer to be repatriated to Belgium, with her children, even if it meant serving a prison sentence.[143] She was given a five year sentence in Belgium, despite still being in Syria.[144]
↑ Number of ISIL brides: (dual or multiple citizens are included in the count for each country of citizenship).
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↑ "Jihadistes: la Turquie va expulser 11 prisonniers français"[Jihadists: Turkey will expel 11 French prisoners]. France TV Info (in French). 11 November 2019. Retrieved 20 August 2020. Parmi ces mères, Amandine, qu'une équipe de France 2 avait filmée en décembre 2018 dans le camp de Roj, au nord-est de la Syrie. Originaire du Calvados, elle s'est mariée à deux reprises, à chaque fois avec un jihadiste, et est mère d'un enfant. Elle va donc finalement rentrer avec son fils, mais comme les autres rapatriés, elle sera incarcérée sur le champ. En revanche, les enfants seront confiés aux services sociaux.
1 2 David Wroe, Josh Dye, Erin Pearson (4 April 2019). "What should Australia do with the children of Islamic State?". Sydney Morning Herald. Al-Hawl refugee camp. Archived from the original on 8 April 2019. Retrieved 7 April 2019. Speaking to The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age from al-Hawl camp, 16-year-old Hoda Sharrouf also says she forgives her father and mother, Tara Nettleton, for dragging her to Syria along with her four siblings when she was just 11 years old.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
1 2 3 Benita Kolovos; Rebecca Le May; Rebecca Gredley (24 June 2019). "Orphaned IS children on way to Australia". Newcastle Star. Retrieved 23 May 2020. The others are three children aged six to 12, who are the offspring of ISIS fighter Yasin Rizvic and his wife, Fauzia Khamal Bacha.
1 2 3 "ISIS bride and a fighter from Singapore said to have died in Syria". Straits Times. 4 August 2019. Retrieved 23 May 2020. Fauziah Begum Khamal Bacha, who was living in Melbourne, is one of four radicalised Singaporeans known to have taken part in the Syrian conflict. Her husband, Yasin Rizvic, and their eldest son are also said to be dead.
↑ Scott Glover (1 May 2017). "The FBI translator who went rogue and married an ISIS terrorist". CNN. Archived from the original on 26 April 2019. Retrieved 26 April 2019. Greene's saga, which has never been publicized, exposes an embarrassing breach of national security at the FBI – an agency that has made its mission rooting out ISIS sympathizers across the country.
1 2 Tresa Baldas (2 May 2017). "FBI translator secretly married Islamic State leader". USA Today. Detroit. Archived from the original on 26 April 2019. Retrieved 26 April 2019. On June 11, 2014, Greene told an FBI supervisor in Indianapolis that she was traveling to Germany to see her family. She filled out the required form and listed “vacation/personal” as the reason for going. Her declared return date: July 4, 2014.
↑ Kirstan Conley; Gabrielle Fonrouge; Bruce Golding (3 May 2017). "FBI translator who married ISIS terrorist refuses to talk about tryst". New York Post. Archived from the original on 26 April 2019. Retrieved 26 April 2019. On Monday, Greene was revealed to have spent two years in the slammer for lying about a 2014 trip she took to Syria, where she hooked up with notorious German rapper-turned-ISIS recruiter Denis “Deso Dogg” Cuspert.
↑ Tresa Baldas (2 May 2017). "FBI translator in Detroit secretly married ISIS leader". Detroit Free Press. Archived from the original on 26 April 2019. Retrieved 26 April 2019. Amid the investigation, court records show, Greene fell in love with Cuspert, sneaked off to Syria in the summer of 2014, married him and warned him that “the FBI had an open investigation into his activities.” She quickly became disenchanted – e-mailing an unnamed person that she had "made a mess of things" – and somehow managed to escape Syria and get back to the U.S., where she was arrested.
↑ Rukmini Callimachi, Catherine Porter (19 February 2019). "2 American Wives of ISIS Militants Want to Return Home". The New York Times. al Hawl Camp, Syria. p.A1. Archived from the original on 20 February 2019. Ms. Muthana and Ms. Polman acknowledged in the interview here that many Americans would question whether they deserved to be brought back home after joining one of the world’s deadliest terrorist groups.
1 2 "Pakistani-origin ISIS brides lose British citizenship: Report". Hindustan Times. 11 March 2019. Archived from the original on 8 April 2019. Retrieved 14 March 2019. Reema Iqbal and her sister, Zara, have five boys under the age of eight between them and are being held in a Syrian detention camp. Reports of them losing their right to return to the UK after losing their citizenship rights come as it was confirmed that Bangladeshi-origin Shamima Begum lost her three-week-old baby in a Syrian refugee camp days after her British citizenship was similarly revoked.
1 2 "UK sisters who wed Isis fighters lose citizenship". London Times. 10 March 2019. Archived from the original on 30 March 2019. Retrieved 14 March 2019. Two more Isis brides from Britain held with their young children in squalid Syrian detention camps are believed to have been stripped of their citizenship amid a growing political row over the death of Shamima Begum’s three-week-old baby.
↑ Paul Sperry (13 May 2017). "Meet the American women who are flocking to join ISIS". New York Post. Archived from the original on 22 February 2019. Retrieved 21 February 2019. Some of these ISIS brides living in Syria and Iraq have made the terrorist watchlist. Arguably the most dangerous is Sally Jones, 49, a British Muslim convert who goes by the nom de guerre Umm Hussain al-Britani. She is reportedly now on a British special-forces “kill list” after threatening Queen Elizabeth II.
↑ Phyllis Chesler (8 April 2015). "ISIS "Jihad Bride" Propaganda Lures Foreign Women". Middle East Forum. Archived from the original on 19 March 2018. Retrieved 8 April 2019. Then, there is the scarcity of medical care. The wife of an ISIS fighter was totally ignored as her blood pooled on the hospital floor during a painful miscarriage. According to Kassab: 'She wasn't offered a chair or a bed and nobody even returned to check on her… The muhajireen (migrants) are also subjected to mistreatment and discrimination by the locals.'
↑ Livia Albeck-Ripka (24 October 2019). "Does Australia Have to Bring Its Women and Children Home From Syria's Camps?". The New York Times. Retrieved 22 July 2020. While the details of many of the women’s stories are unknown, some have come forward to explain themselves, including Mariam Dabboussy. She says that in late 2015, she was forced by gunpoint over the Turkish border with Syria, after traveling there in what her husband claimed was an attempt to extract a relative who was trying to escape the Islamic State.
↑ Benedict Brook (1 October 2019). "From blushing Aussie bride to IS widow". The Chronicle. Retrieved 22 July 2020. A second Australian woman, Zara Ahmed, said security in the camp was continuing to deteriorate, with a woman’s mutilated body found in the toilets. 'I'm so scared, I don't know how much longer I can do this for,' she said.
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