WEEPING WIDOW
ISIS bride Shamima Begum ‘not a threat to anyone’ as she is ‘totally broken and needs help’, claims filmmaker
ISIS bride Shamima Begum is not a threat to anyone as she is totally broken and needs help, a filmmaker has said.
Spanish director Alba Sotorra met Begum in the spring of 2020 at a Syrian refugee camp where she recalled the Brit as being so traumatised that she was incapable of expression.
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Speaking to the , Sotorra said: "In the beginning, Shamima was like a ghost just sitting there, covered, lifeless, like a marionette, a doll."
Sotorra, who is making a film about a workshop run by Kurdish women who are living in the Roj camp.
It was there that Sotorra first met Begum.
“Her lack of ability to express her feelings made me feel deeply sad for her," she recalled.
“Then, maybe two or three months after I met her, we had this game with the kids.
"The kids were playing with kites. Shamima was always very silent.
"And she sat on one of these carts watching. I saw a teardrop fall from her eye. It was the first time.”
The teen ISIS bride fled Britain for Syria to join the militant group in 2015 before moving into the camp after the fall of the terror group's caliphate.
In Sotorra's documentary , that was released earlier this year, Begum revealed that she wanted to kill herself when her three kids died.
Begum gave birth to three children in Syria but all of them died.
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In the film, which was shot in 2019, she said that after the death of her third child, a son, she stayed up all night with his body.
She said: "He was my last hope, he was the only thing keeping me alive. I didn’t know how. That day I just cried for all my children. I cried for all of them. No one could help me, no one could do anything."
Begum said she felt like she wanted to kill herself after her daughter died while she was pregnant with her third child.
She said: "When she died it was so hard because I just felt so alone and I felt like my entire world was falling apart in front of me and I couldn't do anything.
"I felt like it was my fault for not getting them out sooner.
"When she died at that moment I just wanted to kill myself. I felt like I couldn't even get up to run any more when there were bombings.
"The only thing keeping me alive was my baby I was pregnant with. I felt like I had to do him right by getting him out and giving him a normal life.";
She has pleaded with Brits to keep an "open mind" over her returning to the UK with the change in her appearance the biggest hint she has been de-radicalised.
In the documentary she begs: "I would say to people in the UK, give me a second chance because I was still young when I left.
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"I would ask that they put aside everything they've heard about me and just have an open mind about why I left and who I am now as a person."
But in February Begum lost a legal battle to return to the UK for a court appeal over the removal of her British citizenship.
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favour of the Government and said she cannot come back to the UK for a court case to reclaim her British passport for the safety of the public.
Lord Reed said her legal bid to reclaim her British citizenship should be postponed until she is no longer considered a threat to national security.
Meanwhile, Begum is spending her time at Roj camp watching ITV's Good Morning Britain in her tent and binging blockbusters such as Men in Black, the reports.
The ISIS bride also reportedly enjoys playing charades and dancing to Shakira music with her fellow campmates.
MORE NEWS ABOUT SHAMIMA BEGUM
She has now started wearing Western-style clothing - including Nike baseball caps and tight jeans and insists she has changed.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
By contrast, she wore a black headscarf and robes when she was found and interviewed in 2019.
She also tells how she longs for a "foot-long meatball Subway" if she ever returns to the UK.
Shamima Begum 'upset' at being refused entry to UK to fight for British citizenship as she breaks cover in Syrian refugee camp
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