ISIS bride Shamima Begum is living on £100 a week of donations from friends and family while stuck in a hell hole detention camp in the Syrian desert as she continues to dream of being able to return to the UK.
Stateless Begum, 26, was seen for the first time in years earlier this week when she stormed out of an interview at the grim al-Roj camp.
And now The Daily Mail can reveal how the former schoolgirl Jihadi is trying to keep her morale up by enjoying small luxuries like rudimentary beauty treatments paid for by donations from supporters – as her battle with the British government to get her citizenship back drags on.
And the beauty treatments are thought to be part of an ongoing planned campaign by Begum and her supporters to present herself as more ‘Western’ than jihadists in order to win public support for her campaign to be allowed back to Britain.
The camp, made up of rows of tents inside a fortified compound in northwest Syria has been criticised by the Red Cross for being ‘grim’ and ‘extremely volatile’.
But Begum – thanks to handouts from her dwindling band of friends – tries to make her incarceration there as pleasant as possible, despite acknowledging that it is ‘worse than a prison’.
She receives up to £400 per month, which is transferred to a makeshift bank in the camp by her relatives and friends in the UK.
The money is used to top up her mobile phone and visit a shopping area in the camp selling an array of items such as toys, makeup, groceries, and clothes. Some even offer fake designer trainers and other western brands.
Shamima Begum is currently living in a detention camp while fighting the British government for the right to return to the UK
Begum became a child bride to Dutch Islamic convert Yago Riedijk, with whom she had three children – who all died as infants
The former jihadi bride now lives at the al-Roj camp in northern Syria, run by the Syrian Democratic Forces, which she has described as ‘worse than a prison’
Begum and the other inmates are also allowed to visit a souq (market) just outside the camp where a larger selection of food and clothing is available.
In addition to money, she is also allowed to receive clothing and other parcels of everyday items from her family in London.
Begum has been assigned a spacious tent in which she lives alone and is equipped with a television, satellite dish, running water and electricity. One part of it is a kitchen and along with all the other inmates, she has been issued with a cooker which is filled with gas once a week.
A source told the Daily Mail: ‘She lives in relative comfort. She gets good support from NGOs and the SDF (Syrian Defence Forces) working in the camp.’
Al-Roj is home to around 12,000 women and children who are all primarily the relatives of male ISIS members. The camp has a school and 24-hour health centre where an ophthalmologist, dentist, and other medical specialists are on call.
But most remarkable of all has been Begum’s streetwise westernised appearance that has caught the eye as she remains the focal point of controversy and debate over her desire to return to the UK.
She gets her hair cut and styled by fellow female jihadi inmates who also provide services such as manicures, facials and pedicures.
She has also taken to wearing make-up that was initially smuggled in by some of the Syrian Defence Forces (SDF) soldiers guarding the gates of the facility and is also now available at a shop in the camp.
In recent years Begum has been photographed walking around al-Roj in Primark clothes and Nike trainers and wearing her hair down.
In 2021 after the Supreme Court ruled that she could not return to the UK to pursue an appeal against the removal of her British citizenship she was pictured in the camp wearing a pair of sunglasses, a dark jacket, leggings and white trainers.
She looks unrecognisable from the demure young woman who was first pictured in a black niqab in 2019 at another camp for ISIS women before being moved to al-Roj, which lies near the Iraqi-Kurdish border.
In her most recent appearance, Begum who concealed her face behind a mask looked ‘pale and thin’ while wearing a trendy black tee shirt and jeans with her long hair swept over her shoulders.
She was asked about speculation over a possible return to the UK after the Trump administration said that if Britain wanted to be seen as a ‘serious ally’ of the US then it should commit to the international fight against ISIS by taking back citizens currently in the northeast of Syria.
The controversial comment was made by Trump ally Sebastian Gorka prompting Nigel Farage to admit that he had become ‘more thoughtful’ about letting her back into the UK and that he did not see her as an ‘all out ISIS killer’.
She replied ‘no comment’ on both occasions when asked about this by a reporter from the Daily Express before turning on him.
‘If you guys don’t have anything to tell us we don’t have anything to say,’ she raged, before leaving in a huff.
Begum gets her hair cut and styled by fellow female jihadi inmates who also provide services such as manicures, facials and pedicures
Begum, now 26, was born and raised in Bethnal Green, east London before travelling to Syria to join ISIS in 2015. She later became a child bride to Dutch Islamic convert Yago Riedijk, with whom she had three children – who all died as infants.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid stripped her of British citizenship in 2019, prompting her to launch a long legal and PR campaign in a bid to have the decision reversed.
As the battle for her return rages, she has largely refrained from making public comment about her situation.
Mahmoud, a Kurdish translator who previously worked in al-Roj and has met Begum said: ‘She is refusing interviews on the advice of her lawyer. You can still visit her in the camp, but she is unlikely to go on the record.’
Filmmaker Andrew Drury, who knew Begum for 18 months, said she was also able to get her hands on clothes and make-up from broadcasters courting her for interviews – as well as a camp shop selling fake designer goods sourced from local markets.
He told The Daily Mail: ‘There’s a shopping area in the camp with six or seven shops selling things like clothes, food and toys.
‘The clothes shop is opened up to the extremist and non-extremist girls at different times.
‘They get fake Nikes and other western brands that probably come from local markets.’
He added: ‘Every time you want to do an interview you ask her what she wants.
‘Other clothes have probably been donated by their friends or smuggled in by the guards.’
Despite uncertainty over her future and her confinement, Begum has been described as a ‘model detainee’ and ‘courageous’ by those who run al-Roj.
Meanwhile a filmmaker who approached Begum in the camp recently has told how she told him to ‘get the f*** out’.
Rashid Omar, the camp’s director told The Times last year: ‘She is one of the few to have refused to wear niqab.
‘Under the circumstances here, given our difficulties in protecting women, that’s a courageous decision.’
Begum’s lawyers and supporters have argued that she was trafficked to Syria given the fact that she was a minor when it happened and should be allowed to return to the UK.
She was accompanied by two other schoolgirls, Kadiza Sultana and Amira Abase, with Sultana believed killed in an explosion and the fate of Abase remaining unknown.
