A woman who left Alabama joining the Islamic State in 2014 now says she regrets her actions and hopes to return to the United States.
“If I need to sit in jail and do my time, I will…I will not fight against it,” Hoda Muthana, now 28, told the News Movement of the Roj detention camp in Syria, according to the Associated Press. “I hope my government sees me as young at the time and naive.”
Muthana, who was born in New Jersey to Yemeni immigrants and raised in Alabama, ran away from home at age 20 to join ISIS. Raised in a conservative Muslim family, she told her family she was going on a school trip, but instead flew to Turkey and crossed in Syria using funds from secretly cashed tuition checks.
Once in Syria, Muthana says she was held in a guesthouse for single women and children.
US-BORN ALABAMA WOMAN WHO JOINED ISIS IS NOT A US CITIZEN, JUDGE RULES
In this still from video, Hoda Muthana speaks during an interview at Syria’s Roj detention camp, where she is being held by US-allied Kurdish forces.
(AP Photo/The News Movement)
“I’ve never seen this kind of dirt in my life, like there were 100 women and twice as many children, running around, too much noise, dirty beds,” she recalls.
She said the only way out was to marry a isis fighter, and she eventually married three, giving birth to one child. Her first two husbands, including the father of her son, both died in battle. Muthana says she divorced the third.
But the former American now says she regrets everything but the birth of her son and hopes to return to the United States and become an advocate against extremism, claiming she was brainwashed by the terror group when she left Alabama in 2014.
The Islamic State at one time held swathes of territory in Iraq And Syria, at the height of its power, became notorious for its brutal executions and terrorist attacks which it frequently reported on social media. Meanwhile, Muthana has appeared to be a strong supporter of the band in interviews with Buzzfeed News and on social media. Posts from 2015 on her Twitter account showed her encouraging more Americans to join the extremist group and carrying out door-to-door attacks, including drive-by shootings, traffic jams and targeting large gatherings on holidays.
ISIS in its former “caliphal” capital of Raqqa, Syria.
(AP)
She now claims her phone was stolen and the messages were posted by Islamic State supporters, but she would now use her experiences to speak out against extremism.
Muthana had her citizenship revoked in 2016 by the Obama Administration, who argued that his birthright citizenship could be revoked because his father was an accredited Yemeni diplomat at the time of his birth. This decision was maintained throughout the Trump administration, which continued to ban him from returning to the United States.
Lawyers representing Muthana claimed the move was a mistake, saying his diplomatic accreditation ended before he was born. But US courts upheld the government’s position, while the Supreme Court his appeal to hear the case last year was rejected.
She is currently in a detention camp in northern Syria that houses thousands of widows of Islamic State fighters and their children. She continues to claim that she was a victim who will now advocate against extremism.
This undated image provided by attorney Hassan Shibly shows Hoda Muthana, an Alabama woman who left her home to join Islamic State after becoming radicalized online.
(Muthana/Lawyer Hassan Shibly via AP)
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“Even here, right now, I can’t say everything I want to say. But once I leave, I will. I’ll be an advocate against it,” she said. “I wish I could help the victims of ISIS in the West to understand that someone like me is not one of them, that I too am a victim of ISIS.”
Hassan Shibly, a lawyer for Muthana’s family, says it is “absolutely clear that she was brainwashed and profited from it”. He added that the family believe they should be allowed to repay their debt to society and help others “not fall down the dark path she has been led down”.
“She was completely wrong, and no one is denying it. But again, she was a teenager who was the victim of a very sophisticated recruitment operation which aimed to take advantage of the young, the vulnerable, the excluded”, did he declare.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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