Towie fan who travelled to Syria begs father to take her home in reunion at Turkish detention centre as she reveals what life is like inside ISIS stronghold of Raqqa
- Tareena Shakil, 25, fled to Syria with 17-month-old son Zaheem to join ISIS
- But escaped from terrorists across Turkish border after changing her mind
- Staffordshire-born mother is now begging her father, 42, to ‘take her home’
- She is currently being held at Turkish detention centre after escaping ISIS
- TOWIE fan said life in ISIS-held city of Raqqa was ‘hard’ and she ‘hated it’
A British woman who travelled to Syria with her young son before escaping an ISIS stronghold has begged her father to take her home after describing life with the jihadists as ‘hard’.
Tareena Shakil, 25, ran away to the war-torn country last October after telling relatives she was going on holiday to Spain with her 17-month-old son Zaheem.
However, the TOWIE fan said life in the ISIS-held city of Raqqa was ‘hard’ and she escaped back across the Turkish border after, she claims, the militants tried to force her into marrying a one-legged fighter.
Now Shakil, from Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, has asked her father for forgiveness and begged him to ‘please take me home,’ after being told she could potentially be sent back to Syria and into the clutches of the terrorist group.
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Tareena Shakil, 25, (left) who fled to Syria to join ISIS with her toddler son Zaheem (together right) before changing her mind and escaping to Turkey, has now begged her father to free them from a detention centre
Shakil fled back across the Turkish border with her 17-month-old son Zaheem after ISIS tried to force her into marriage, she claims. She fled to Syria in secret in November after telling family she was going on holiday
The mother and her son are currently being held in a Turkish detention centre, and the pair met with Shakil’s father in an emotional two-hour reunion yesterday.
According to The Sun, the psychology graduate wept to her father as she said: ‘Take me home, dad – please take me home. Get me out of here.’
Mohammed, her 42-year-old father, has previously told how his daughter was a one-time Spice Girls fan, a school prefect and Girl Guide and was so fascinated with ITV reality show The Only Way Is Essex that she travelled 150 miles to buy clothes at a shop run by one of its stars.
He apparently promised his daughter during their reunion that he would ‘not leave without her’.
Shakil fled to Syria, to join ISIS militants, in secret after telling her family she was going on holiday to Spain.
However, she changed her mind about staying in the stronghold after a few days and desperately tried to flee.
She told The Sun: ‘I hated it. I tried to escape within a few days of getting there. It wasn’t what I thought it would be.
‘Life is so hard there. There’s no hot water, no electricity for hours on end, none of the comforts we are used to in Britain.
‘I escaped death so many times. There were bombs coming down on the street where I lived every night. The house would shake. I didn’t know if I was going to live or die.’
After fleeing her Staffordshire home in November, Shakil entered Syria through the Turkish border. She has since returned to Turkey after describing life in the ISIS-held city of Raqqa as ‘hard’ and claiming she ‘hated it’
Shakil, a fan of The Only Way Is Essex, said she ‘didn’t know if she was going to live or die’ during her time in Syria. Pictured: The residential street she lived on in Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, before she fled to ISIS
Her brother Tareem, 22, previously told how the family hadn’t suspected anything about her escape to Syria, and only found out when she contacted home to say she was at the border.
He said: ‘She sent us messages saying she’d gone over for a new life, that she had been radicalised.
‘She said she wanted to live in the way of Allah. She was promised a good life with a good husband. She wanted to live under Sharia law.
‘But it wasn’t like that. Then she was texting saying she might not make it back. She was messaging, ‘Please help me, I made a stupid mistake. Please Dad, will you come here and get me?’ He was planning to go out there, but she made the escape herself.’
Her escape saw her dash through a no-man’s land near the Turkish-Syrian border, where snipers on the Turkish side did not fire at her.
She then scrambled over a barbed wire fence, injuring her feet but somehow keeping young Zaheem unharmed.
A Foreign Office source has previously said that Shakil will be questioned over possible terror offences and sent on a course to be ‘de-radicalised’ if she is sent back to Britain.
She is one of more than 500 Britons who are believed to have travelled to join the extremist group in Iraq and Syria. Europol revealed this week that there could be up to 5,000 people from European countries in total who have fled to join the militants.
Fears of a terrorist attack on Britain’s streets have heightened in response to the threat of returning fighters and in the wake of shootings in Paris, including at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
2 Comments
No hot water, no electricity? What was she expecting? A 5-star vacation resort?
She should be locked up for a very very long time, for systematic child abuse and putting the innocent child’s life in great danger.
There can be no such things as “radicalisation” and “de-radicalisation”. The media uses that term as if people have off-on switches tucked away somewhere behind their heads hat can be manipulated at will.
Those “radicals” (UK’s Anjem Choudary and India’s Zakir Naik included) should be institutionalized, treated for severe mental disorders and kept under 24 hour observation, The “radical” should not be released until a team of qualified psychiatrists can certify with 100% confidence that he/she no longer poses any risk to society.
No hot water, no electricity? What was she expecting? A 5-star vacation resort?
She should be locked up for a very very long time, for systematic child abuse and putting the innocent child’s life in great danger.
There can be no such things as “radicalisation” and “de-radicalisation”. The media uses these terms as if people have switches tucked away somewhere behind their heads that can be turned on or off at will.
Those “radicals” (UK’s Anjem Choudary and India’s Zakir Naik included!) should be institutionalised, placed under solitary confinement, treated for severe mental disorders, and kept under 24 hour observation. A “radical” should not be released until a team of qualified psychiatrists certify with 100% confidence that he/she no longer poses any risk to society.