Shamima Begum accepts she joined ISIS and expected never to return to UK
Former British schoolgirl turned reformed ISIS bride Shamima Begum has discussed the public's opinion of her.
Begum, now 23, left the UK for Syria in 2015 when she was just 15 but has now insisted that she is 'not the person that they think I am'.
However, Begum admits that she does understand why British people are angry at her for having made the decision to leave the UK to join the terrorist organisation.
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She made the revelation during the first full account of her story on the BBC podcast The Shamima Begum Story.
The revelation comes amid her ongoing bid to have her British citizenship restored and be granted permission to return to the UK, where she had previously lived in South London.
It was revoked by the government after she was deemed a security risk.
She explained that after being groomed by ISIS online, she was initially 'relieved' to leave the UK as a teenager and never expected to want to return.
But she accepts that as a result of her actions people see her 'as a danger, as a risk, as a potential risk to them, to their safety, to their way of living.'
The current debate around Begum is centred on whether she is a legitimate victim of child sexual exploitation or whether she is actually a potential terror threat to the UK.
Begum, who had three children who all died, said of the public's anger towards her: "I don't think it's actually towards me. I think it's towards ISIS.
"When they think of ISIS they think of me because I've been put on the media so much."
Following the defeat of ISIS in 2019, Begum, like many others, fled to detention camps in Syria, where the 23-year-old remains.
When asked if she accepts that she knowingly joined a terrorist organisation, she said: "Yes, I did."
Tim Loughton, the former children's minister, told the BBC that while Begum claims to have been 'brainwashed', people remain suspicious of her for a reason.
He said the public likely suspects that she is 'putting on act' in going from 'a heavily veiled Muslim young woman to somebody wearing Western clothes' to give the impression she had 'stayed in east London as a normal British teenager.'
"I think most people will say that, frankly, we owe her nothing. She got herself into this mess and frankly it's down to her to work out how she's going to get out of it," he said.
Begum fled the UK for Syria after conversing with members of ISIS online alongside two other school girls - one of whom died and the other is suspected to have been killed.
You can listen to The Shamima Begum Story podcast on BBC Sounds.
Emma Guinness