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‘Jihadi Bride’ Shamima Begum Was a Member of Daesh Morality Police – Report

The young woman has denied any wrongdoing during her time with the terror group and claimed she was only a “housewife” to her jihadi husband.
Sputnik

Shamima Begum, the young woman who ran away from the UK to join Daesh when she was 15, was actually a member of Daesh's so-called "hisba", which acted as a morality police on terrorist-occupied territories, a report by The Sunday Telegraph reads.

An anti-Daesh activist from Deir Ez-Zor reportedly told the newspaper that Begum — who claimed she was only a "housewife" during her time with the terror group — had been seen wielding an automatic weapon and shouting at Syrian women for wearing brightly coloured shoes.

"Members of our group from Raqqa knew her well", the activist, Aghiad al-Kheder, told the newspaper. "There were lots of young European women in the hisba. Some of them were very harsh and the local population became very scared".

Al-Kheder, is the founder of an anti-Daesh collective that gathered and published first-hand information on Daesh crimes, according to The Independent.

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After Daesh's defeat north of the Euphrates River, Begum ended up in the SDF-controlled al-Hol detention camp in February. She applied for permission to return to the UK, but Home Secretary Sajid Javid denied her entry and reportedly stripped her of citizenship. Begum's lawyers are seeking to contest the decision, arguing that the woman is now effectively stateless.

Javid pledged to block all citizens suspected of joining Daesh from returning to the UK where possible, The Independent report reads.

In the meantime, the United Nations has issued a warning that the stereotypes that women only went to Daesh to become "jihadi bribes" causes female Daesh recruits to be dangerously underestimated by national security forces around the world.

The terror group reportedly assigned women important roles as recruiters, radicalisers, and "enablers of jihad". Remarkably, Daesh, which adhered to most radical interpretations of Islam, officially permitted women to fight in defence of the self-proclaimed caliphate. As Daesh rapidly lost ground north of the Euphrates, women and children were repeatedly seen fighting against the advancing forces.

Begum was one of three teenagers known as the Bethnal Green Trio, who left the UK together to join Daesh in 2015. So far, Begum is the only one whose fate is known. The other two — Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana are presumed dead, although Begum said she heard rumours that Abase could still be alive.

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