Alabama Woman Who Fled U.S. to Join ISIS Gives Rare Interview
‘BROKE ME COMPLETELY’
A woman who ran away from her home in Alabama at the age of 20 to join the terror group Islamic State has broken her silence from a detention camp in Syria, claiming she will serve jail time in the U.S. if necessary. Hoda Muthana, who had a child with an ISIS fighter, allegedly became one of the group’s most prominent online propagandists—but she now claims that her phone was taken from her and the posts weren’t even from her. Speaking from the camp where she is being held by U.S.-allied Kurdish forces, Muthana claimed she was a “victim of ISIS,” brainwashed by online traffickers in 2014 into joining the group. “If I need to sit in prison and do my time, I will do it... I won’t fight against it,” the 28-year-old told The News Movement. “I’m hoping my government looks at me as someone young at the time and naive.” Muthana’s pleas to return are not necessarily new: According to the Associated Press, her jail time plea is “a line she’s repeated in various media interviews since she escaped from one of the extremist group’s last enclaves in Syria in early 2019.” The same year, then-President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. would refuse to let Muthana back in. “I still believe I’m a citizen now. One of the worst feelings I’ve ever had is someone telling me I wasn’t an American citizen. That broke me completely,” she said.