Two American wives of ISIS militants want to return home

Hoda Muthana, who left Alabama four years ago, says she is deeply sorry and wants to return home.
Hoda Muthana, who left Alabama four years ago, says she is deeply sorry and wants to return home. PHOTO: THE NEW YORK TIMES

AL-HAWL CAMP (Syria) • She was a 20-year-old college student in Alabama who had become convinced of the righteousness of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). So she duped her parents into thinking she was going on a college trip and instead bought a plane ticket to Turkey with her tuition money.

After being smuggled into the caliphate, student Hoda Muthana posted a photograph on Twitter showing her gloved hands holding her American passport.

"Bonfire soon," she promised.

That was more than four years ago. Now, after being married to three ISIS fighters and witnessing executions such as those she had once cheered on social media, Muthana says she is deeply sorry and wants to return home to the United States.

She surrendered last month to the coalition forces fighting ISIS and now spends her days as a detainee in a refugee camp in north-eastern Syria.

She was joined there by another woman, Kimberly Gwen Polman, 46, who had studied legal administration in Canada before joining the caliphate and possesses dual US and Canadian citizenship.

Both women, interviewed by The New York Times at the camp, said they were trying to figure out how to have their passports re-issued and how to win the sympathy of the two nations they scorned.

Polman, who was born in Hamilton, Ontario, to an American mother and Canadian father, said, "I don't have words for how much regret I have."

In a tweet this weekend, US President Donald Trump criticised allies, including Britain, France and Germany, for not taking back hundreds of ISIS prisoners captured on the battlefield.

He made no mention of American women who had married ISIS fighters and whom the US had not taken home.

Both Muthana and Polman said they had not been visited by US officials since their capture last month.

A small number of Americans - as few as 59, according to data tracked by the George Washington University programme on extremism - are known to have travelled to Syria to join ISIS.

Nearly all the American men captured in battle have been repatriated, but it is unclear why some of the American women and their children - at least 13 known to The Times - have not been.

A spokesman for the FBI declined to comment on the two cases, but said agents would typically work to build a criminal case against any American who joined ISIS, a designated terrorist organisation.

Mr Robert Palladino, a spokesman for the State Department, described on Tuesday the situation for Americans in Syria as "extremely complicated". He said "we're looking into these cases to better understand the details", but declined to comment further, citing privacy and security concerns.

A Canadian government official said it could be difficult for Canadians detained in Syria to leave the region because they were likely to face serious charges in neighbouring countries.

Citing the many crimes committed by ISIS, Mr Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the George Washington programme, said there were "thousands of legitimate reasons to question the sincerity" of appeals like those of Muthana and Polman.

"The foreign women of the Islamic State, while often reduced to simplistic narratives about 'jihadi brides', 'brainwashing' and 'online grooming', aided and abetted many of these atrocities and in some cases directly perpetrated them," he said.

Muthana and Polman acknowledged that many Americans would question whether they deserved to be allowed back home after joining one of the world's deadliest terrorist groups.

"How do you go from burning a passport to crying yourself to sleep because you have so much deep regret? How do you do that?" Polman asked. "How do you show people that?"

The two women, a generation apart, met and befriended each other in the final pocket of the caliphate, which by last month consisted of less than 15 sq km.

They began talking about making a run for it. Last month, Muthana said, she decided to give it a try.

All she took was her baby and his stroller, she said. Days later, Polman followed and surrendered as well.

Weeks later, after having no contact from the American or Canadian authorities, they got in touch with a lawyer, who is trying to help navigate their return to North America.

Muthana gave a handwritten note to the lawyer.

"I realised how I didn't appreciate or maybe even really understand how important the freedoms that we have in America are. I do now," she wrote. "To say that I regret my past words, any pain that I caused my family and any concerns I would cause my country would be hard for me to really express properly."

NYTIMES

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on February 21, 2019, with the headline Two American wives of ISIS militants want to return home. Subscribe