American Who Joined ISIS Begs to Return to US

A woman who married three different ISIS fighters and traveled to Syria to live among the Islamic terror group in 2014 now wants to return to the U.S.

By United with Israel Staff

Hoda Muthana was born and raised in the United States, but at the age of 20 in 2014 decided to leave home and join the brutal Islamic regime ISIS.

At the time, ISIS controlled large swaths of Syria and Iraq, posting horrific videos online of beheadings, torture, and other atrocities, including burning to death a prisoner in a cage.

During her time in Syria, Muthana was married to three different ISIS fighters, reported an outlet called The News Movement (TNM), which posted a 15 minute video with Muthana on YouTube. Every time one of her husbands was killed, Muthana married again, giving birth to one child along the way and divorcing her third spouse.

After ISIS terrorists were driven back and forced to relinquish territory, Muthana was detained in the Roj Camp in Syria, where she is “being held by U.S.-allied Kurdish forces,” reported the Associated Press.

According to Muthana, she “was brainwashed by online traffickers into joining” ISIS and “regrets everything except her young son, now of pre-school age,” added the AP report.

A search for content online related to Muthana appears to show tweets calling for attacks against Americans, but Muthana denies she made the posts, claiming ISIS took her phone and posted the messages.

In 2019, after the fall of ISIS, Muthana’s status as a U.S. citizen was questioned by the American government when she was told that she would not be permitted to reenter the U.S.

“I still believe I’m a citizen now,” Muthana told TMN in the interview posted on Sunday. “If I need to sit in prison and do my time, I will do it. I won’t fight against it.”

When asked if there’s anything she would like to say to the victims of ISIS, which is estimated to have caused the deaths of over 300,000 civilians, Muthana told TMN, “I feel really horrible for them…I stand with them, I don’t stand with ISIS. Of course I regret coming here. I never sympathized with [ISIS] attacks.”

According to the AP report, “[F]our years earlier, at the height of the [ISIS’] power, she had voiced enthusiastic support for them on social media and in an interview with BuzzFeed News. [ISIS] then ruled a self-declared Islamic caliphate stretching across roughly a third of both Syria and Iraq.”

The AP report continued, “In posts sent from her Twitter account in 2015 she called on Americans to join the group and carry out attacks in the U.S., suggesting drive-by shootings or vehicle rammings targeting gatherings for national holidays.”

Based on the ban currently in place, Muthana must remain in Syria.

Muthana’s parents are immigrants from Yemen who raised their daughter in “a conservative Muslim household in Hoover, Alabama, just outside Birmingham,” said the AP.

Muthana reportedly lied to her family about a school trip in 2014, flying instead to Turkey, where she entered Syria, paying for the trip with tuition checks.

Muthana’s attorney, Hassan Shibly, claims it is “absolutely clear that she was brainwashed and taken advantage of.”