Former Brit ISIS bride who is now happily re-married says it proves Shamima Begum deserves a second chance back in UK
Tania Joya, 35, claims she is now completely rehabilitated and happily married with four children in Texas even though she once was a jihadi bride who travelled to Syria.
She has now backed calls for ISIS bride Shamima Begum to be given a second chance and allowed to return to Britain.
Joya told the Daily Mail: “Shamima was a child while she was groomed and she is still a child.
“If she is willing to accept her mistakes, she could be rehabilitated.
“Give Shamima and her baby a chance to live. She will outgrow the brainwashing as I did.”
The former Bethnal Green high school student left to become a jihadi bride with two pals in 2015 but was recently discovered by a Times journalist in a refugee camp.
The former Londoner is now heavily pregnant and due to “give birth any day”.
Begum became separated from her jihadist husband two weeks ago after they gave themselves up to Kurdish forces.
Give Shamima and her baby a chance to live. She will outgrow the brainwashing as I did
Joya added: “I feel sorry for [Shamima], she is so young, she has been in a toxic environment for all these years where she is not allowed to think anything different from the rest of the group.
“She is still in that state. She is only 19 and that’s when I radicalised.
Joya also called for new laws to be introduced in the UK that would effectively protect children from their religion, saying they needed to be kept away from “suppressive ideas”.
Born Joya Choudhury, she was radicalised when her parents moved to Barking, east London when she was 17 and, in her own words, became a “hardcore jihadist”.
She married American John Georgelas in a sharia ceremony after meeting him on a matrimonial website in February 2003.
Initially the couple settled in California before moving to Cairo and then to Syria in August 2013.
Joya claims she was brainwashed by her husband who exerted an alarming control over her and would repeatedly rape her.
She constantly begged John to take her to the border so she could escape and eventually he agreed.
RETURNING JIHADIS What is the law in Britain?
In 2018, it was revealed that almost 400 Brit jihadis who fought for bloodthirsty ISIS in Syria are back in the UK.
But shockingly just one in ten have been prosecuted for "direct action they've carried out in Syria".
Around 15 per cent of the 850 Brits believed to have travelled to Syria or Iraq have died.
The Home Office says every person who returns is questioned by police and an assessment made over whether they are a threat to Britain.
However few have been prosecuted.
The Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill is currently going through Parliament, after its third reading in the House of Lords.
This could make travelling abroad to join terror groups an offence which carries a penalty of ten years in prison.
Security Minister Ben Wallace said: "The UK advises against all travel to Syria and parts of Iraq. Anyone who does travel to these areas, for whatever reason, is putting themselves in considerable danger.
"Everyone who returns from taking part in the conflict in Syria or Iraq must expect to be investigated by the police to determine if they have committed criminal offences, and to ensure that they do not pose a threat to our national security.
"There are a range of terrorism offences where individuals can be convicted for crimes committed overseas and we can also use Temporary Exclusion Orders to control an individuals' return to the UK."
From there she met a contact arranged by her husband who got them on a plane to Istanbul and eventually she moved in with John’s parents.
John, now 35, took the name Yahya al-Bahrumi and is thought to have spearheaded ISIS’s propaganda but Joya says she has not been in contact with him since 2015 and is not sure if he is alive or dead.
Joya is now estranged from her British family and married to IT executive Craig Bruma, 49, after he answered her ad on a dating website.
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