Foreign Affairs

‘I Will Be An Advocate Against This’: Former ISIS Bride Says She Wants To Come Back To America

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An American-turned-ISIS bride is asking to come home with her child and work with victims of terrorism after she left the terrorist group in 2018, according to an interview with The News Movement.

Hoda Muthana left the United States in 2014 when she was 20 years old to join ISIS and eventually was forced to marry three ISIS soldiers before fleeing the group with her son in 2018, according to an interview from The News Movement. Muthana said that she hoped one day she would be allowed to come back to the U.S. with her son and work with victims of ISIS.

“Even here right now I can’t fully say everything I want to say,” Muthana stated. “But once I do leave I will be an advocate against this.”

After leaving the U.S. in 2014, Muthana was taken to a guest house with “100 women” living there and informed that they were not allowed to leave unless they got married, according to the interview. Muthana subsequently married an ISIS soldier and then married two more after her previous husbands were killed in the fighting.

In 2019, a judge ruled that Muthana had never truly been a citizen due to her father being a Yemeni diplomat and upheld a 2016 decision by former President Barack Obama that she would not be allowed to come back to the country, according to The New York Post. Muthana said that when the U.S. announced that she had never been a citizen, it was “one of the worst feelings of my life.”

Muthana is currently residing in the Roj detention camp with her son in Syria after leaving ISIS in 2018. Despite this, Muthana said she would serve a prison sentence to return to the U.S.

“If I need to sit in prison, and do my time, I will do it. … I won’t fight against it,” she explained.

During her time with ISIS, a series of tweets from Muthana’s Twitter account were made calling for violence against Americans, but Muthana claimed that her phone was taken from her and that someone else was using her account.

“Go on drive-bys and spill all of their blood, or rent a big truck and drive all over them,” a March 19, 2015, tweet from her account read. “Veterans, Patriot, Memorial etc Day parades..go on drive by’s + spill all of their blood or rent a big truck n drive all over them. Kill them.”

Muthana claimed during the interview that she had been physically abused before she left her home in Hoover, Alabama, and that she needed a “reason to leave.” Muthana also pointed out that the people who convinced her to join ISIS were young and used her religious beliefs to lure her.

“Someone who is God-fearing and afraid of missing out on all the obligations will end up listening to something like this,” Muthana said. “I always wanted an outlet, but someone [told] me that I had to come or else my religion was not accepted.”

Muthana could not be reached for comment.