Shamima Begum’s ISIS bride friends met grim fates as call that horrified family exposed

Shamima Begum, who left the UK to join ISIS in Syria, has been pictured for the first time in years as she remains stuck in a detention camp – but what happened to her two school friends?

Shamima Begum, the Bethnal Green pupil who became a notorious jihadi bride, has been photographed for the first time in years while remaining trapped in exile.

At just 15 years old, Begum abandoned her family to join the Islamic State (ISIS), a choice that resulted in her losing her British citizenship and being held in a detention camp in Syria.

Now 26 and still yearning to return home, Begum had a brief conversation with the Daily Express from the ‘squalid’ camp, with journalists observing that “her eyes were somewhat sunken, and she seemed pale, as well as very thin”. This has reignited debate about whether Begum should ever be permitted to return to British soil.

Little is known about Begum’s two school companions, Kadiza Sultana and Amira Abase, who were merely 16 and 15 respectively when they undertook the dangerous journey from London to Syria in February 2015.

The trio, all top-grade pupils at Bethnal Green Academy, witnessed their lives change dramatically.

As Begum’s tale re-emerges, the Mirror has explored what became of her classmates and fellow ISIS brides, Sultana and Abase.

The three girls became international headlines when CCTV images of them walking through security scanners at a London airport were published in a desperate bid to stop them reaching their destination.

Travelling unaccompanied, Begum wore a leopard print scarf, Abase sported a bright yellow hoodie, and Sultana was dressed in a grey checked scarf and jumper. The teenagers were captured once more on CCTV footage at a bus station in Istanbul, Turkey, dragging their weighty luggage through the snow whilst awaiting public transportation.

However, by the time authorities issued their public appeal, it was too late – the youngsters had already crossed into Syria and wed ISIS militants.

What they did within the so-called caliphate remains uncertain. Begum maintains she was simply a housewife, whilst intelligence officials claim she helped stitch explosives into suicide vests.

Sultana, the oldest of the trio, had married an American ISIS combatant. Yet in telephone conversations with her sister back in Britain, recorded by ITV News, she voiced her longing to return home but confessed she was “scared”.

Her sister Halima, speaking directly after the conversation, revealed: “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.”

Sultana is thought to have perished in a Russian bombing raid several weeks afterwards in May 2016, though this has never been independently confirmed. The family’s legal representative, Tasnime Akunjee, informed BBC Newsnight they had received word of her death in Raqqa.

Mr Akunjee explained: “I think she found out pretty quickly that the propaganda doesn’t match up with the reality.”

He also disclosed: “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 afterwards, Begum looked back on losing her mate, saying: “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.”

Abase married ISIS militant Abdullah Elmir, an 18-year-old Australian who was dubbed the Ginger Jihadi because of his red hair. He perished in a drone attack in December 2015.

Abase had been staying in contact with her mum, Fetia Hussen, back in the UK through social media, but the correspondence suddenly stopped, causing her mother to fear her daughter had also died. Yet Begum has previously insisted Abase remains alive.

Begum married an ISIS fighter and Dutch citizen, Yago Riedijk, 27, when she was only 15 and had three children with him, all of whom later died. In 2019, Begum was deprived of her British citizenship and subsequently lost her appeal to regain it in 2023.

As reported earlier this year, Begum is said to now sell food parcels she receives in a detention camp from aid agencies to gather enough money for Western attire and hair dye.

Last year, Begum sought to reverse the government’s 2019 decision to revoke her citizenship on grounds of national security.

However, in August 2024, judges determined that she would not be allowed to contest the revocation at the Supreme Court as her case “do not raise an arguable point of law”.

At the time, her solicitor Daniel Furner stated: “We are not going to stop fighting until she does get justice and until she is safely back home.”

The issue of whether Begum will be allowed back to London was once again debated following the collapse of the Assad regime in December 2024.

Yet, amid these discussions, the current Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy has vowed that Begum will never be permitted to return to the UK after President Donald Trump’s counter-terrorism chief declared that British members of ISIS currently living in Syrian prison camps should be repatriated.

Sebastian Gorka, a prominent figure in the Trump administration, asserted that any nation wishing to be seen as a “serious ally” of the US should commit to repatriating citizens in northeastern Syria.

However, Mr Lammy, then Foreign Secretary, firmly declared that the government would “always put British security interests first and the safeguarding of our population”.

Speaking on ITV’s Good Morning Britain at the time, Mr Lammy stated: “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 went on to say that should these individuals return to the UK, some of them “would have to be, frankly, jailed as soon as they arrived”.

Despite exhausting all legal options when the Supreme Court rejected a final appeal bid in August 2024, Begum continues to harbour hopes of returning to the UK, with her legal team now pursuing a case at the European Court of Human Rights.

The justices determined the decision would rest with the court in their judgment, noting it must establish whether the procedure to strip her of British citizenship ought to have taken into account that she might have been a victim of trafficking.

Her legal representatives argued the UK had failed to intervene and secure the return “of their citizens and their children” who have been “arbitrarily imprisoned”. They expressed: “It is a matter of the gravest concern that British women and children have been arbitrarily imprisoned in a Syrian camp for five years, all detained indefinitely without any prospect of a trial. All other countries in the UK’s position have intervened and achieved the return of their citizens and their children.”