‘Twisted’ Shamima Begum said her kids’ deaths ‘don’t make her sad’ & feared Ukraine war would ‘take spotlight off her’
SHAMIMA Begum said her three kids' deaths “don’t make her sad” and has told how she feared the Ukraine war would “take the spotlight" off her.
Begum, now 23, fled to Syria in February 2015 and lived under Isis rule for more than three years before she was found.
While in Syria she has given birth to three children - but all of them have died.
Begum's newborn son died in March 2019, in a Syrian refugee camp.
The baby, who was less than three weeks old, died of pneumonia, according to a medical certificate.
She had previously told reporters that she lost two other children to malnutrition and disease.
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In 2019 Begum said that she now "hated" the terror group after the death of her three babies and that her mental health was suffering.
But now Journalist and film maker Andrew Drury has revealed how the “twisted” ISIS bride told him the deaths don’t affect her.
He visited Al-Roj camp in north east Syria four times to see Shamima and her fellow inmates.
In his new book he explained: “Away from the cameras she showed me photographs of her late children, who she had had with convicted terrorist Yago Riedijk — who she had married ten days after landing in Syria. Her youngest child, Jarrah, died shortly after her arrival at Al-Roj.
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“As a parent, it made me feel very emotional. Before we left the camp Shamima took my phone number.
“On October 7, 2021 I was in a work meeting in Surrey, with my feet up on the desk, when my phone pinged with a WhatsApp message: “Hey Andy, it’s Shamima.”
“I messaged back saying how I had felt emotional after seeing the photos of her kids.
“She replied: “If you [sic] makes you feel any better I’ve moved on from that part of my life. It doesn’t make me feel sad any more.”
“The reply floored me. I thought: 'Hold on, there’s something wrong here.'
"You cannot get over the death of three children in such a short time — it would absolutely traumatise any human being.”
And after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Begum callously told Andrew that she was jealous of the attention the warring countries were attracting.
He said: “In the run-up to this final trip, we chatted about day-to-day events just to keep in touch.
“She wrote: ‘Everytime something like the Ukraine crisis happens in the world we feel like all our cases are pushed to the side and that we’ll never get out of here.’
“Shamima had again lowered my opinion of her. She did not care about the suffering of the people of Ukraine. She was more bothered that it was taking the news spotlight away from her.”
The Supreme Court ruled in February 2021 that the 21-year-old will NOT be allowed to return to the UK.
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Begum cannot come back to Britain for a court case to reclaim her British passport due to concerns over the safety of the public.
Andrew’s encounters with Shamima and his travels as one of the world’s prolific extreme location adventurers are detailed in his new book Trip Hazard, which is out this autumn and is available to pre-order from for £9.99.