British mother of five who escaped the clutches of ISIS Tells Her Story

A British woman who escaped from the Islamic State in Syria has spoken of the true horrors of life under their evil regime. Shukee Begum, 33, flew to the war-torn country with her five children last year, claiming she went only to convince her ISIS fighter husband, Jamal al-Harith, to come home.

Last week it emerged that al-Harith, a suspected Taliban sympathiser who was detained in Guantanamo Bay, left their family home in Manchester 18 months ago to join the terrorists in Syria.But Ms Begum's attempts to persuade the fanatic to return home failed, and she endured a ten-month ordeal being passed between hostages and rebel groups as she tried to escape. 

When she tried to leave a court told her 'women and children belong in ISIS territory', she said. She eventually reached safety last month when she was rescued by Al Qaeda-linked group Al Nusra.

Ms Begum and her children are now believed to be living in Syria, near the Turkish border.

In an exclusive interview broadcast on Channel 4 News tonight, Ms Begum tells of a 'gangster mentality' among the women she met while in Syria, adding they talked about 'war, killing'.

She also warned other women thinking about joining the terrorists that you 'can't expect to leave easily' and that there was 'no personal autonomy at all'.

Her husband, Al-Harith, born Ronald Fiddler, is a Muslim convert who was suspected of terrorism by the U.S. but freed from Guantanamo Bay in 2004 after lobbying by the British government.

But 18 months ago, when Ms Begum was pregnant with their fifth child, he left their family home to join the jihadists, urging his wife to follow him to Syria. 

After initially refusing, Ms Begum later travelled to Turkey before heading to ISIS-held territory in Syria with their children - the youngest of whom was just four weeks old. 

Ms Begum, a law graduate from Greater Manchester, insists she did not support the extremists, and says she wanted to persuade al-Harith to return to the family home. 

She told Channel 4 News: 'He's my husband and all of a sudden he's not there. It didn't feel like home any more. I was trying to manage school runs, things like that.

'I was thinking about the children's futures. Was he part of it Will he come back? All these things go through your mind.'

She added: 'I was seeing on the news at this point that Isis was going from bad to worse… So I decided that I was going to try and speak some sense into him.

'At the same time I wanted to see him. I wanted the children to see their father. I wanted the baby to meet his father as well.'

Despite al-Harith's decision to enlist with IS, she insisted her husband is a 'family man'. 

'I've always known him,' she said. 'I've been married to him for 11 years. I've always known him to be a good man with good characteristics.

'For me to take the children to see him and then come away from there that would have been more powerful than anything else I could have said at the time.' 

After arriving in Syria, Ms Begum ended up living in a crowded safe-house in the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa, along with dozens of other foreign women looking for their husbands.

She told Channel 4 News: 'You've got hundreds of families living in one hall, sharing perhaps one or two bathrooms between them, one or two kitchens between them.

'Children crying, children were sick. There was a gangster kind of mentality among single women there. Violent talk – talking about war, killing

They would sit together and huddle around their laptops and watch Isis videos together and discuss them and everything. It was just not my cup of tea. It was worse than I expected. 

'I didn't expect it to be so overcrowded for them to just lumber so many women and children together just for the sake of them being there, waiting for their husbands.'

Eventually, Ms Begum and her children were reunited with al-Harith, and the family moved to a house near al-Bab in northern Syria. 

But her planned to bring him home failed: she could not convince him to leave. 

Ms Begum said she only planned to keep the children in Syria for a month, but after a bag containing her phones, travel money and passports was stolen, she found herself trapped.

She asked her husband to help her get out, to no avail. And she appealed to an Islamic court to give her permission to leave, but was told: 'Women and children belong in Isis territory.' 

This is what I want to make clear as well to other women thinking of coming into Isis territory - that you can't just expect to come into Isis territory and then expect that you can just leave again easily,' she said. 'There is no personal autonomy there at all.' 

'I wasn't Isis and I'm not Isis. I was hoping that would be the deciding factor and they would let us go after a while.

'I had evidence as well. I told them: "You can check my Facebook, you can check my personal email accounts. I don't have anything to show I'm an Isis supporter".' 

Ms Begum added she is biding her time before returning to Britain because she fears she could face terrorism charges.