the times | Wednesday November 10 2021 17
News
Shamima Begum’s jihadist husband has
spoken warmly about their “beautiful
life” in Islamic State territory in Syria
and said he still hopes for a caliphate.
Yago Riedijk, 29, from Arnhem in the
Netherlands, married Begum when she
was 15, shortly after she fled Bethnal
Green in east London in 2015 with two
schoolfriends and joined the terrorist
group. Begum had two miscarriages
and three children, who all died.
Riedijk said that he hoped the Isis
caliphate would rise again so the pair
could return to their “beautiful” life
together. He smiled as he described
baking cakes together in Raqqa, the de-
clared capital of Isis, and said he wanted
to reunite and “start a family again”.
Riedijk is being held at a detention
camp in northeast Syria. He told Alan
Duncan, a British film-maker, that he
did not believe Isis was finished and
would like to see another caliphate that
adhered to “Islamic traditions”. He has
been convicted in the Netherlands for
joining Isis and faces a six-year jail term
if he returns to Europe.
Begum, now 22, is detained in a Kurd-
ish-run facility. She spent nearly four
years with the terrorist regime before
she was found by The Times in a refugee
camp in February 2019. Begum was
initially unrepentant and said she was
unfazed when she saw a severed head in
a bin but has since asked for forgive-
ness. Begum is appealing against theIsis bride’s husband
tells of life together
government’s decision to revoke her
citizenship. This was done on the basis
she would not be stateless because she
could claim Bangladeshi citizenship
through her parents. In February the
Supreme Court ruled that she could not
return to Britain to fight the citizenship
decision because it would put public
safety at stake.
Riedijk told the film-maker that
some Isis terrorist attacks on the West
had been wrong. “I don’t agree with
these attacks for a couple of reasons,”
he said. “The prohibition of killinginnocent people in Islam, women and
children. I see these attacks as not being
Islamicly [sic] responsible.”
He did not condemn attacks on the
Yazidis, whom Isis fighters used as sex
slaves, answering “no comment”.
Riedijk outlined how he and Begum
discussed marriage when she arrived in
Syria and agreed on conditions: “It was
not really anything big. Small things
like going out shopping — stuff like this.
She asked for some freedoms which I
agreed to give her,” he said. He added
that Begum had asked for an English
translation of the Quran.Fiona Hamilton Crime & Security Editorinvited to? The difference here is in
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gave the shows of
his life at Madison
Square GardenYago Riedijk was in
his early twenties
when he married
Shamima Begum