Alabama woman who joined Isis hopes to return from Syria camp
- Hoda Muthana said she was brainwashed by into joining Isis in 2014
- She says she hopes to return to the US and serve prison time if necessary
A woman who ran away from home in Alabama at the age of 20, joined Islamic State (Isis) and had a child with one of its fighters says she still hopes to return to the United States, serve prison time if necessary, and advocate against the extremists.
In a rare interview from the al-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, 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,” the 28-year-old told US-based 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 various 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 Islamic caliphate stretching across roughly a third of both 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 targeting gatherings for national holidays.
