As people of the United Kingdom face an uncertain future, a British jihadi bride named Samia Hussein who had travelled to Syria on her own volition and lost an arm in an airstrike is now living in a £500,000 (over 5 crore) council house and has been fitted with an expensive prosthetic limb allegedly funded by the National Health Service (NHS), reports The Mail.
Hussein was injured during an air attack in the Syrian city of Raqqa, which was under the control of the Islamic State. She had joined ISIS as a 22-year-old in 2015 and returned to Britain in February 2020 and as of now, she has not been charged with any offence but remained under investigation.
Hussein was born in the UK and later enrolled for a degree course in journalism at the United States International University in Nairobi in 2014. After IS declared its caliphate stretching between Syria and Iraq she started getting inspired by its propaganda videos with university friends and, according to her own account, was being groomed online by terror chiefs.
Hussein left Kenya and entered Syria via Turkey which is the route chosen by many European Muslims in early 2015. When she arrived in the ISIS-controlled area, she said she first stayed in a ‘madhafa’, or guesthouse, for Jihadi brides in the town of Manbij, which was nicknamed “Little London” because of the large numbers of British jihadis living there.
The IS were forced women to stay in a madhafa until they married a Jihadist and Hussein was wed to a fighter called Abu Suleiman and the couple lived in Manbij for six months before moving to Raqqa. It was during her stay in Raqqa she lost her arm which had to be amputated and she also lost a breast and suffered severe leg injuries due to the airstrike.
Hussein was captured during the battle of Baghouz and in early 2019 and was detained at the al-Hol prison camp. There in an interview, Hussian said she was vulnerable and was trying to find a purpose in life that led her to give up a career of being a journalist and now four years of her life went down the drain because she thought she was coming for a better cause.
Even though Samia Hussein is now filled with regret probably due to the injuries she has suffered, it must be noted that she joined the Islamic State when it took thousands of Yazidi women as sex slaves and her denials must be taken with a pinch of salt when she said, “‘I didn’t do anything. I played no part in it, OK,”.
But the above statement contradicts her because during the same interview when asked about the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing, which left 22 people dead – mainly children, she called them “victims of war”. Hussein came to the UK 18 months ago and was arrested under anti-terrorism laws but was released shortly despite spending five years with IS.
She is now living in a new-build council house with members of her family in West London, where such properties cost between £500,000 and £600,000 which is beyond the reach of an average for a law-abiding citizen of this country. At present Hussian has no electronic tag on her which means she is not being monitored by the police.
The prosthetic arm fitted on her costs around £3,000 and it is estimated thousands of pounds more was spent on consultants’ fees and physio aftercare, shortly after she arrived back in Britain. The state-of-the-art expensive artificial limb that she received comes at a time when the NHS was suffering some of the worst backlogs in its history because of the Covid-19 pandemic and budget constraints.
Tory MP Tom Hunt said, “If you went to Syria to join IS, which was and is an avowed enemy of this country, then you have abdicated your British citizenship. You should not be allowed to come back, let alone be put in a council house and given expensive treatments on the NHS,”.
Many in the UK now are concerned that how people like Samia Hussein even ever be allowed back into the country and according to Tory MP Andrew Bridgen who said, “I just hope this woman has been thoroughly assessed and she does not pose a threat to national security or her neighbours,”.
According to a BBC report, around 450 British jihadis have returned to the UK from Syria and an investigation by the BBC has revealed that only 14 which is less than 3 per cent have been convicted of terror offences and the Home Office estimates at least 950 British extremists went to Syria to wage jihad for ISIS.
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