April 04, 2019 / By mobanmarket
Shamima Begum’s jihadist husband has claimed she has done nothing but “sit in the house” for the last three years as he revealed he wants them to live a normal family life in the Netherlands.
Yago Riedijk, 27, a Dutch Islamic State fighter, is being held at a Kurdish-run detention centre in northern Syria.
In a BBC interview, he admitted fighting for the terror group but said he now wanted to live “a moderate Muslim life” with his 19-year-old British wife and their newborn son in his native country.
He claimed Miss Begum posed no danger to the public and defended his decision to marry her when she was just 15, days after her arrival in Syria having fled her family home in Bethnal Green, east London, to join Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).
"To be honest, when my friend came and said there was a girl who was interested in marriage, I wasn’t that interested because of her age,” he said.
“But I accepted the offer anyway and we sat down and she seemed in a good state of mind.”
Riedijk insisted: "It was her own choice. She was the one who asked to look for a partner for her then I was invited.
“Yes she was very young, maybe it would have been better for her to wait a bit. But she didn’t, she chose to get married and I chose to marry her."
Riedijk said his young bride was shy and anti-social when they met, according to the BBC’s Quentin Sommerville. She rarely left the house, and never discussed the terror attacks in Europe or elsewhere.
“I don’t understand how she would, in any form, be a danger,” he said. “All she did was she sat in the house for three years.”
Miss Begum has described having seen a severed head in a bin and how she had survived bombing raids.
But her husband painted what Mr Sommervile described as a “darker picture” of life with Isil, attending the stoning of a woman and seeing piles of corpses of murdered IS prisoners.
He fought in Aleppo and was injured fighting in Kobane.
He reportedly revealed that he was imprisoned in Raqqa and tortured after extremists accused him of being a Dutch spy.
Riedijk and Miss Begum escaped the last remaining Isil stronghold of Baghouz as the caliphate crumbled but were separated and have not had any contact for several weeks.
He said his parents sent him money to escape.
Riedijk, a convert to Islam, grew up in a middle-class family home in Arnhem but was radicalised online and moved to Syria to join Isil in October 2014.
He faces a six-year jail term if he does return to the Netherlands after being convicted in his absence of joining Isil last July.
He is also suspected by police of being involved in a terrorist plot in the country.
The Dutch authorities suggested on Sunday that they would not help any jihadists who wanted to return and that Riedijk would be arrested if he sets foot on native soil.
Last month, Miss Begum begged the British authorities to rescue her from the al-Hawl refugee camp in northern Syria where she has recently given birth to her third child.
But instead, her citizenship was revoked by Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary.
She then raised the possibility of living in the Netherlands herself but is highly unlikely to be granted entry, not least because spousal visas are not available to those aged under 21.
Mr Javid last week suggested that her son would be entitled to British consular help if his mother consented to them being separated.
Miss Begum and Riedijk had two other children, a son and a daughter aged 18 months and nine months, who died of illness and malnutrition respectively in November 2018 and January this year.
Miss Begum is understood to have been transferred to a different camp within the last few days for her own safety after giving multiple interviews to journalists.
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