Shamima Begum’s best friend claims she has been brutally attacked at their detention camp in Syria.
US-born Hoda Muthana, 29, says she was “kicked like crazy” after being set upon by die-hard ISIS supporting women at the Al-Roj camp in northeast Syria.
Muthana says her seven-year-old son witnessed the horrifying attack which she claims camp authorities have done nothing about.
In texts exclusively obtained by British filmmaker Andrew Drury and seen by Express.co.uk, a desperate Muthana said: “I got beat up by some terrorist b**tards in the park.
“They beat me in front of the whole camp and when they finished, they said they were proud of being ISIS. They kicked me like crazy in front of my son and he was basically crying hysterically.”
An image shared by Muthana shows one of the nasty large bruises she claims she suffered in the attack. Like Shamima Begum, Muthana is effectively stateless after Barack Obama’s administration revoked her American passport and the US Supreme Court declined an appeal against that decision in 2022.
Both she and Begum, 24, have taken to wearing Western clothing once more and both have appealed to the press in their home countries to come home.
In photographs the pair can be seen posing for selfies together having formed a close bond over the years since they were captured in 2019.
Begum left her home in Bethnal Green, London aged 15 for Syria to join ISIS. She married an ISIS fighter and had three children, none of whom survived. Since then she has been stripped of her UK citizenship and is detained in the same Syrian camp as Muthana. Begum once praised the 2017 Manchester Bombings as a “kind of retaliation” and “justified” because of Western military attacks on ISIS. She has since apologised for those comments.
Similar to Begum, Muthana also came to light over comments attributed to her about her former home nation.
In 2015 a twitter account said to be used by New Jersey-born Muthana posted: “You can look up Obamas schedule on the white house (sic) website. Take down that treacherous tyrant!”
In an interview in 2022, Muthana denied sending the tweets, which she said were made by an ISIS member who took her phone.
Al-Roj camp, which holds around 3,000 women and children, is split between those who have embraced a more Western outlook and a hard-line core who still cling to supporting the death cult ISIS.
In a series of messages Muthana told Mr Drury she knew the women who attacked her claiming it was an older woman, her daughter and another woman in her 20s who all “still support ISIS”.
Muthana added that one of her attackers was “brought to camp Roj for raising the ISIS flag in al-Hol”.
Al-Hol is the largest ISIS detention camp in northeast Syria, home to 60,000 mostly male former and existing followers of the terrorist group. Begum’s Dutch-born husband Yago Riedijk is an inmate there.
Muthana, who grew up in Alabama, claimed camp Al-Roj guards “only insulted” her after the attack and that she was told if she complained about the ISIS supporting women “I’ll get sent to a camp where the women will beat me more”.
Filmmaker Andrew Drury has met both Muthana and Begum having visited their camp six times in the past few years.
He said: “Hoda is in just the same predicament as Shamima, that’s why they have become friends, they’re both in the same situation.
“They’ve both got no hope now, in Hoda’s case she has probably less hope to get to America than Shamima has of getting back to us.
“This attack proves the exposure of these girls, because the ones that decided to become more Western again, there is no protection for them.
“It’s a double-edged sword for the women left there, because they want to show they want to come home, but now it makes them vulnerable to being attacked.
“I think these attacks (by ISIS supporters) have been going on for a long period of time. Shamima herself was getting abuse a while ago, and I think there will be more attacks now.”
Dad-of-four Mr Drury added that hearing about Muthana’s young son witnessing the attack was disturbing. He added: “He doesn’t deserve to be there, the children shouldn’t be there.
“Remember it’s not a prison camp, it’s a holding centre really for where these women go next. None of them have been through any court process in terms of crimes they may or may not have committed.
“Shamima’s court appearance would have to be in Syria now, because she doesn’t have any citizenship she would be tried as a foreigner in that country.”
Mr Drury said he did not believe the UK Government would recognise any decision by the European Court of Human Rights on Begum’s citizenship. Her legal team are said to be considering petitioning the ECHR to hear her case after exhausting appeals here in the UK.
