A woman who ran away from Alabama at the age of 20, joined ISIS and had a child with one of its fighters says she still hopes to return to the US, serve prison time if necessary, and advocate against the extremists.
From Roj detention camp in Syria, where she is being held by US-allied Kurdish forces, Hoda Muthana said she was brainwashed by online traffickers into joining the group in 2014 and regrets everything except her young son, who is now of preschool age.
“If I need to sit in prison, and do my time, I will do it … I won't fight against it,” Ms Muthana, 28, told US outlet The News Movement.
“I'm hoping my government looks at me as someone young at the time and naive.”
It is a line she has repeated in media interviews since fleeing from one of the extremist group's last enclaves in Syria in early 2019.
But four years earlier, at the height of the extremists' power, she had voiced enthusiastic support for them on social media and in an interview with BuzzFeed News.
ISIS then ruled a self-declared caliphate stretching across about a third of Syria and Iraq.
In posts sent from her Twitter account in 2015, she called on Americans to join the group and carry out attacks in the US, suggesting drive-by shootings or vehicle rammings aimed at gatherings for national holidays.
Ms Muthana now says her phone was taken from her and that the tweets were sent by ISIS supporters.
She was born in New Jersey to Yemeni immigrants and once had a US passport.
Ms Muthana was raised in a conservative Muslim household in Hoover, Alabama, just outside Birmingham.
In 2014, she told her family she was going on a school trip but flew to Turkey and crossed into Syria instead, funding the travel with tuition cheques she had secretly cashed.
The administration of president Barack Obama cancelled her citizenship in 2016, saying Ms Muthana's father was an accredited Yemeni diplomat at the time she was born, in a rare revocation of birthright citizenship.
Her lawyers have disputed that move, saying the father's diplomatic accreditation ended before she was born.
The Trump administration maintained that she was not a citizen and barred her from returning, even as it pressed European allies to repatriate their own detained nationals to reduce pressure on the detention camps.
US courts have sided with the government on the question of Ms Muthana's citizenship, and last January the Supreme Court declined to consider her lawsuit seeking re-entry.
That has left her and her son languishing in a detention camp in northern Syria that houses thousands of ISIS fighters' family members.
About 65,600 suspected ISIS members and their families — Syrians and foreign citizens — are held in camps and prisons in north-eastern Syria, according to a Human Rights Watch report released last month.
Women accused of affiliation with ISIS and their minor children are mainly housed in the Al Hol and Roj camps, under what the rights group described as “life-threatening conditions".
The camp inmates include more than 37,400 foreigners, among them Europeans and North Americans.
Human Rights Watch and other monitors have told of dire living conditions in the camps, including inadequate food, water and medical care, as well as physical and sexual abuse by guards and other detainees.
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How to help
Call the hotline on 0502955999 or send "thenational" to the following numbers:
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States of Passion by Nihad Sirees,
Pushkin Press
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Living in...
This article is part of a guide on where to live in the UAE. Our reporters will profile some of the country’s most desirable districts, provide an estimate of rental prices and introduce you to some of the residents who call each area home.
Tearful appearance
Chancellor Rachel Reeves set markets on edge as she appeared visibly distraught in parliament on Wednesday.
Legislative setbacks for the government have blown a new hole in the budgetary calculations at a time when the deficit is stubbornly large and the economy is struggling to grow.
She appeared with Keir Starmer on Thursday and the pair embraced, but he had failed to give her his backing as she cried a day earlier.
A spokesman said her upset demeanour was due to a personal matter.
Dubai Bling season three
Cast: Loujain Adada, Zeina Khoury, Farhana Bodi, Ebraheem Al Samadi, Mona Kattan, and couples Safa & Fahad Siddiqui and DJ Bliss & Danya Mohammed
Rating: 1/5
Pharaoh's curse
British aristocrat Lord Carnarvon, who funded the expedition to find the Tutankhamun tomb, died in a Cairo hotel four months after the crypt was opened.
He had been in poor health for many years after a car crash, and a mosquito bite made worse by a shaving cut led to blood poisoning and pneumonia.
Reports at the time said Lord Carnarvon suffered from “pain as the inflammation affected the nasal passages and eyes”.
Decades later, scientists contended he had died of aspergillosis after inhaling spores of the fungus aspergillus in the tomb, which can lie dormant for months. The fact several others who entered were also found dead withiin a short time led to the myth of the curse.
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
Pox that threatens the Middle East's native species
Camelpox
Caused by a virus related to the one that causes human smallpox, camelpox typically causes fever, swelling of lymph nodes and skin lesions in camels aged over three, but the animal usually recovers after a month or so. Younger animals may develop a more acute form that causes internal lesions and diarrhoea, and is often fatal, especially when secondary infections result. It is found across the Middle East as well as in parts of Asia, Africa, Russia and India.
Falconpox
Falconpox can cause a variety of types of lesions, which can affect, for example, the eyelids, feet and the areas above and below the beak. It is a problem among captive falcons and is one of many types of avian pox or avipox diseases that together affect dozens of bird species across the world. Among the other forms are pigeonpox, turkeypox, starlingpox and canarypox. Avipox viruses are spread by mosquitoes and direct bird-to-bird contact.
Houbarapox
Houbarapox is, like falconpox, one of the many forms of avipox diseases. It exists in various forms, with a type that causes skin lesions being least likely to result in death. Other forms cause more severe lesions, including internal lesions, and are more likely to kill the bird, often because secondary infections develop. This summer the CVRL reported an outbreak of pox in houbaras after rains in spring led to an increase in mosquito numbers.
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Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Ad Astra
Director: James Gray
Stars: Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones
Five out of five stars