Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Teen Girl Who Fled England To Join ISIS - The Shamima Begum story

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

Shamima Begum fled London to go join a terrorist group. She eventually had her UK citizenship revoked. This is her story

So this girl is pregnant and she's in a war zone and she's running for her life. And there's gunfire and the sounds of bombs all around her. And all she wants to do is get home safely. So the girl, let's call her Sham. She's 15, she lives at home with her parents in London, and she's a good student. But for some reason, Sham feels like she isn't loved. But then one day she gets a message from a friend overseas.

And friend is like, it's too bad you live in the UK, because it's paradise here in Syria and ISIS territory, And Sham, she's heard about ISIS before. She's heard a lot of bad things. But after weeks of chatting back and forth with her friend, Sham is now convinced she can find the love that her life is missing if she moves to Syria and into ISIS territory. And soon enough, Sham decides that's what she's gonna do.

And she convinces two of her London friends to go with her. These two girls, Amira and Khadiza. So Sham packs her bags and she tells her parents that she's gonna go study and that they'll be back in a few hours. And then she, Amira and Khadiza, sneak away to the airport. and they take a flight to Istanbul, Turkey, and there they meet up with a smuggler at a bus station. The smuggler is a guy who specializes into getting people into ISIS territory. So he takes them and he guides them through a smuggling route,

which goes about 700 miles across Turkey and into Syria. Meanwhile, back in England, Shams' parents noticed she's missing. And then word gets out that three teenage girls left London to go join ISIS. So this becomes a huge media story. International hunt for three young girls believed to be on their way to join ISIS. But no one can find them because Sham, Amira, and Khadiza are now in Syria and they are officially off the grid. Now at this point in ISIS territory, Sham would likely be forced to wear a full burqa. But for the purpose of storytelling, I'm not going to put her in that.

Because then you won't recognize her in the pictures. So anyway, as soon as the girls get to ISIS territory, they're immediately expected to start a new domesticated life. And after only being there for 10 days, 15-year-old sham, is married off to an ISIS fighter, a 23-year-old man who will just call husband. And Sham is taught to be obedient to husband and to do whatever he asks. And surprisingly, Sham and her new terrorist husband get along well enough. Sometimes he even grants her permission to go out and see her friends.

So that's nice of him. But after only 10 days together, husband comes home one day and he's like, I have to go to prison. Because he's being accused by ISIS of being a spy. So ISIS takes him away and they put him in prison and they torturing. And to make it worse for Sham, her friend Kadeza, unfortunately, dies in a bombing. So Sham is at home all alone for seven months while Isis husband is being tortured in an ISIS prison. But then, I guess they realize he's not a spy, so then ISIS releases him and returns him home.

But then, one day, boom, Sham gets pregnant. And she has a baby daughter. And now, suddenly, she starts feeling some of that love she's been missing in her life. And then shortly after daughter's born, boom, Sham gets pregnant again. And this time she has a baby's son. Awesome, double the love. But then, eight months later, unfortunately, baby son gets sick. So she takes him to an ISIS hospital, but they have no meds and not enough staff. So son doesn't get the treatment he needs, and he dies. And it gets worse. Her daughter, who's now one year nine months old, also gets sick and dies. And on top of all that, her husband has turned out to be abusive. Shocker. But Sham still has to do what whatever he says because those are the rules.

And so, boom, she gets pregnant again. And then at some point, Amira goes missing. And since they live in an active war zone, she's presumed to be dead too. But crazy enough, around this time, ISIS actually starts to collapse and Kurdish forces start taking over ISIS territory. So with all this conflict going on, pregnant sham tries to flee. And she ends up getting separated from her husband and captured by the Kurdish forces. And once captured, they take her to a refugee camp in northern sea.

Syria. So now she's 19 years old, she's nine months pregnant, living in this refugee camp with no friends and no husband. But at that camp, she meets a journalist. And they get to talking and Shamm tells this journalist that she's one of the girls from the news, one of the girls who left London to go join ISIS. And she also tells him like, yeah, I'm done here. I'd like to go back to London now. So journalists starts reporting on her. And word gets out that they finally located this famous missing girl from the news. And this story blows up. Everyone's talking about it. And Sham wants to come home. But the British government is like, eh, not so fast. And they strip her of her British citizenship, mostly because she, you know, joined a terrorist organization. But this is a big news story,

and Sham has people on her side, including lawyers. And her lawyers fight the decision and they appeal it, arguing that Sham was actually a victim of human trafficking. And during this whole fight, Shamm is still in the refugee camp and she gives birth to her third kid, a son. But unfortunately, pretty quickly, the son ends up dying of pneumonia. And the whole appeals process about her citizenship takes years. But in the end, the court unanimously upholds the removal of Shams' UK citizenship and they don't let her back in the country. And to this day, at 24 years old, Sham is still living in Syria, still living in the refugee camp. So, shout out to Syria, I guess.