‘Shamima Begum tried to rope in other pupils too’

SHAMIMA BEGUM, who left Britain to join Daesh (Islamic State group) and later had her British citizenship revoked, used to convince her school mates to join an Islamic group which is "going to heaven" and "was building a better place- a utopia". The revelation came recently from one of her classmates who attended Bethnal Green Academy around the same time.

Jon, who claimed to have studied alongside Shamima Begum, Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana, has claimed that the girls were obsessed with this unusual Islamic religious group and tried to recruit other students too.

“They’d start talking about religion and try to rope people in,” Jon told My London on Friday (18). “They were really pressuring about it, there were like ‘you know, if you don't go to Islam you're going to hell, you're going to die'.”

Recalling the conversations, Jon added that the message that Shamima and Amira delivered was not about hate or violence, but a dream of a perfect society in Syria which is “growing" and is "the next big thing".

“They made it sound as if it was such a good place to be: You don't need to worry about money or whatnot, everything's there for you,” Jon said. “If you just study and learn religion, uphold the values of Islam, your life is sorted.”

The former 'Bethnal Green Academy' on February 22, 2019 in London, England (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Jon also revealed that Amira wanted him to meet an Islamic teacher who could explain things about Daesh in more detail. The boy, who was 15-year-old at the time, admitted that he found the pitch appealing and also that the girls’ words often sounded like they had been scripted by adults.

Jon also recalled noticing matching pins on the lapels of the trio which was a black flag with white Arabic writing on it. Being a teenager at the time, he admittedly was not aware that there was a civil war going on tearing the middle eastern country apart.

“I never heard anything about ISIS violence,” Jon explained. “What you got pitched was a sunny, beautiful, idyllic place. As a kid you want that fairytale life.”

Once the girls left, a strict regime was installed in the school and everyone had to register with a police officer in the morning, Jon said. They were also banned from speaking about their classmates who had disappeared and the whole thing had a traumatising effect on the children who felt that they might be spied on.

Shamima was a 15-year-old schoolgirl when she travelled from London to Syria with two fellow pupils in February 2015. Britain’s interior ministry had revoked her citizenship on national security grounds after she was discovered heavily pregnant in a Syrian refugee camp in February 2019.

Shamima, now 21, is currently being held at the al-Roj prison camp, where she is still campaigning to be given a chance to return to the UK insisting that she was just a "dumb kid" who made a "mistake" when she ran off to Syria.