‘Towie jihadi’ who fled Britain to join ISIS claims she was ‘taken advantage of’ and ‘regrets everything’
A BRIT woman who was jailed for joining ISIS said she "regrets everything".
Tareena Shakil, who was dubbed the Towie Jihadi for her love of The Only Way Is Essex, said she was taken advantage of by Isis extremists who groomed her.
Shakil, now 32, fled to Syria in 2014 aged 24, with her infant son.
She was handed a six-year prison sentence in 2016 after escaping back to the UK and lying to Brit cops that it was never her "intention" to join the sick terror group.
But it was revealed in court she had exchanged messages online with other extremists and posted vile Twitter rants.
While in Syria Shakil also let her son, then one-year-old, pose next to an AK47.
The mum-of-one, from Staffs, is the first and only British woman to be imprisoned for joining ISIS.
But she has since claimed she was taken advantage of by recruiters and insists she is full of regret.
Shakil told BBC Radio 4’s Today: "I regret every last thing in terms of my decision to run away to Syria with my child.
“I live with the consequences every day."
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She told the flagship news program that she believes she was groomed by recruiters, adding: "It’s not something that you’re aware of at the precise moment that you’re being recruited."
Now living in Birmingham, Shakil explained: "You're not aware that at this precise moment I’m vulnerable.
"That awareness comes after, and it came after for me.
"I remember feeling really sad and bitter, taken advantage of, duped - I remember feeling really ashamed of myself to some degree that I had allowed it to happen.”
She told how life in ISIS territory was fraught with fear, adding: "Conversations were often listened to and you’re just generally expected to behave in a certain way. You don’t cause any trouble.
“There were two girls who would act up, they were just unruly and a van came and took them away and we never saw them again."
Shakil was released from prison in 2019, having served half of her time.
But she insists that she is fully deradicalised and is now focussed on having a "normal life".
She said: "I’ve been educated about things that IS would say that were not true - and they used Islamic explanations or verses in the Koran.
“Along the way I’ve had a lot of different conversations with a lot of different people, Imams in prison, mentors outside.
“It’s been seven years since I ran away, I’ve done three years in prison, I’ve done three years outside.
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“I’ve done everything that’s asked of me and built a normal life for myself. I work, nothing bad has happened.
“I don’t have any intention to do anything other than get on with my life."
