“I’m already in prison”
An Irish ISIS bride and former soldier has said she wants to return to Ireland after finding herself trapped in the “prison” of a Syrian refugee camp.
Speaking to a CNN reporter, Lisa Smith, 37, described her desperation to leave Baghouz while she cradled her two-year-old daughter.
The former flight attendant in the Irish Air Corps said: “I think people should just realise that all the people here are not terrorists. I want to go home.”
“Even if they put me in prison at home, it’s better than being here,” a Canadian citizen tells @JomanaCNN who gets rare access to #SDF-controlled camps where more than 1,000 foreign #ISIS fighters are stranded as their home countries seem reluctant to take them back. #Syria pic.twitter.com/FKxCXzUDp3
— Connect the World (@CNNConnect) March 24, 2019
Asked about the possibility of being prosecuted for joining the terror network, she added: “I know they’d strip me of my passport and I wouldn’t travel and I’d be watched kind of, but prisons I don’t know?
“I’m already in prison.”
Smith’s husband is now dead and she and her child are both Irish citizens, meaning they could potentially return to the country.
The interview follows it emerging over the weekend that Ireland’s Defence Forces and the Department of Foreign Affairs have drawn up plans to bring her and her daughter home. The case is also being assessed to judge whether any wrong-doing has taken place.
It follows Shamima Begum – who travelled to Syria to marry an ISIS fighter aged 15 – having her British citizenship revoked by the home secretary Sajid Javid after requesting to return to the country with her month-old child. Her baby subsequently died in the country.
