Shocking destiny of Shamima Begum’s ISIS bride pals and telephone name that terrified household

Juvenile jihadi bride Shamima Begum continues to fight to come back to the UK from a camp in northern Syria, but what happened to her two schoolgirl friends who joined ISIS alongside her?

East London schoolgirl turned jihadi bride Shamima Begum has sparked public debate again after foreign secretary David Lammy insisted that she will never be allowed back to Britain.

Ms Begum was one of a trio of schoolgirls taking the dangerous journey from London to Syria in 2015 – she is now in a Syrian camp controlled by armed guards . Less is known as to the whereabouts of the other young women, who travelled with Ms Begum to join ISIS as teenagers.

The Bethnal Green school pals – who were all straight-A students – left the UK in February 2015 to join ISIS in Syria. Kadiza Sultana, then 16, Amira Abase, then 15, accompanied Shamima, who was also 15-years-old at the time, as their lives took a twisted turn.

Teen Begum left her family to join ISIS, a mission that would ultimately see her stripped of her British citizenship – and living in a detention camp in Syria. Ten years later and still determined to come home, David Lammy’s words will come as another blow to the now 25-year-old.

But as Begum – whose three children all died – remains in a Syrian camp – what happened to her classmates turned ISIS brides, Sultana and Abase?

Shocking footage of the young girls hit global headlines in 2015 when CCTV showed them walking through security checks at Gatwick Airport in London – they were travelling alone. Begum was wearing a leopard print scarf, Abase was in a bright yellow hoodie, and Sultana wore a grey checked scarf and jumper.

The scarves were spotted again in CCTV of the teens at a bus terminal in Istanbul, Turkey, as the girls carried heavy bags through the snow then waited to board public transport. A police appeal was put out, but it came too late – the teenagers had made it across the border to marry ISIS fighters in Syria.

Once married, the roles the three girls played in the Muslim caliphate remain uncertain. Begum claims she was simply a housewife, but intelligence sources said she was involved with stitching explosives into suicide vests.

Kadiza was the oldest of the three girls. She had married an American ISIS fighter but in phone calls to her sister in the UK, filmed for ITV News, she said she was “scared” – and wanted to return to the UK.

Speaking straight after the phone call, her sister Halima said: “She sounds very terrified. She did get very emotional there as well. I feel really helpless. What can I do? It’s really hard. I don’t think she’s ever made a choice by herself. That was the first one and a very big one. I just look forward to the next call and that’s what keeps me going.”

Kadiza is believed to have died in a Russian airstrike a few weeks after that phone call, in May 2016, but this has never been independently confirmed. Her family’s lawyer, Tasnime Akunjee, told BBC Newsnight they heard a report of her death in Raqqa.

Speaking on Newsnight at the time, Mr Akunjee said: “I think she (Kadiza Sultana) found out pretty quickly that the propaganda doesn’t match up with the reality. The problem with that was the risk factors around leaving are quite terminal also, in that if ISIS were able to detect and capture you, then their punishment is quite brutal for trying to leave.

“In the week where she was thinking of these issues a young Austrian girl had been caught trying to leave ISIS territory and was by all reports beaten to death publicly, so given that that was circulated in the region as well as outside – I think Kadiza took that as a bad omen and decided not to take the risk.”

Years later, Begum spoke about losing her friend. She said: “Her house was bombed. Underground, there was secret stuff going on, and a spy had figured out that something was going on, and other people got killed as well. At first, I was in denial. I thought if we died, we’d die together.”

The other teen, Amira, married ISIS fighter Abdullah Elmir, an 18-year-old Australian, who was nicknamed the Ginger Jihadi, because of his ginger hair. He was killed in a drone strike in December 2015.

Amira had been communicating with her mum, Fetia Hussen, back in the UK via social media, but when the messages suddenly stopped, her mum was left believing that her daughter was dead, too. But Begum previously claimed that Amira is still alive.

Begum married IS member Dutch national Yago Riedijk, 27, when she was 15. She had three children with him, however all the children later died. She was stripped of her British citizenship in 2019.

In 2023 she appealed the decision but lost her appeal to get it back. The 25-year-old now reportedly sells food parcels she has been given in a detention camp by aid agencies to make enough money for Western clothes and hair dye.

Last year, she attempted to overturn the government’s 2019 decision to strip her citizenship on national security grounds. But in August, judges ruled that she would not be allowed to challenge the removal at the Supreme Court as the grounds of her case “do not raise an arguable point of law.”

Begum’s solicitor Daniel Furner speaking at the time said: “We are not going to stop fighting until she does get justice and until she is safely back home”

Now, David Lammy has vowed that Begum will never be allowed to return home to the UK after Donald Trump’s incoming counter-terrorism chief declared that British members of ISIS currently residing in Syrian prison camps should be repatriated.

Mr Lammy has made it clear that the Government would “always put British security interests first and the safeguarding of our population.” Sebastian Gorka, who will have a key role in the Trump administration, stated that any nation wishing to be seen as a “serious ally” of the US should now commit to taking back citizens in northeastern Syria.

In an interview with ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Mr Lammy said: “Shamima Begum will not be coming back to the UK. It’s gone right through the courts. She’s not a UK national. We will not be bringing her back to the UK. We’re really clear about that. We will act in our security interests. And many of those in those camps are dangerous, are radicals.”

Mr Lammy added that if they were to return to the UK, some of these individuals “would have to be, frankly, jailed as soon as they arrived”.