Sharmeena Begum, who recruited Shamima Begum into Isis, found alive in Syria

Sharmeena Begum, the British jihadi bride who left the UK as a schoolgirl in 2014 and is said to have recruited Shamima Begum into Isis, has been found alive in Syria and arrested, according to the Mail on Sunday, as reported by The Sun and the Evening Standard.

The 27-year-old was tracked down during the police investigation into the Berlin Pride attack in July. Investigators found she had exchanged messages with Abdul Ballout, the attacker who rammed a van through a crowd of revellers and then attacked people with a machete. One woman was killed and 29 people were injured before Ballout was shot dead by police after a 24-hour manhunt.

According to the Mail on Sunday, Ballout sent Sharmeena a video of himself pledging allegiance to Isis, and she was allegedly supposed to pass it to the group’s propaganda chief for release after the attack. The reports say Germany’s BKA federal police passed her phone number to Western intelligence agencies, who traced her to a hideout in Syria.

Sharmeena left Britain for Syria in 2014, two months before her former classmate Shamima Begum travelled in 2015. She is understood to have been influential in persuading Shamima to follow her, though the two are not related. Following the collapse of the caliphate in 2019, she reportedly remained an adherent of extremist ideology.

Her father, Mohammed Nizam Uddin, told the Mail on Sunday he had not heard from her in years and believed she was dead: “I am relieved that she is at least alive. I did not know she had been arrested. No one from the police or the Government has told me anything about her for years.”

Sources

• Brit jihadi bride, 27, who recruited Shamima Begum into ISIS ‘found ALIVE after being linked to Berlin terror attack’ — The Sun (reporting the Mail on Sunday)
• London Evening Standard — carried in Google News Top Stories (UK)