Back Home from ISIS
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 5 July 2018
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For years, the so-called Islamic State has managed to attract thousands of would-be jihadis and jihadi brides to join their caliphate. The extremist propaganda, online videos and recruiters have seen thousands of people from all over the world flock to Iraq and Syria to join IS; including 850 men, women and children from the UK. The brutality of the terror group is now well known, partly due to their own publicity online. Videos and stories of beheadings, floggings and sex slaves have been released to the public, drawing in a new wave of foreign fighters. It's thought 50% of UK citizens who left to join IS, have now returned home- the rest are dead, detained or missing. What happens to these returnees when they come back? With only a minority being prosecuted and imprisoned, what efforts are being made to de-radicalise the rest? This investigation explores the danger posed by UK returnees, the efforts to de-radicalise and reintegrate them and the difficulties of proving they were ever part of the caliphate once they've returned home. Reporter: Paul Kenyon Producer: Kate West (Illustration: A woman wearing a hijab)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you for downloading this podcast from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:04.3 | I'm Paul Kenyon and I've been investigating the risks that returning jihadis |
| 0:08.8 | from so-called Islamic State pose to the United Kingdom. |
| 0:12.4 | The problem affects schools of countries |
| 0:14.7 | whose citizens left to fight on the battlefields of Iraq and Syria. It's estimated |
| 0:19.6 | that of the 900 British citizens who travel to the region, |
| 0:23.6 | around half of them have now come home. |
| 0:26.1 | So are they all a threat? |
| 0:28.4 | Keep listening to find out. Hello Rashid. He phoned me through what's up. |
| 0:44.0 | He just kept saying mama mama. |
| 0:47.0 | I remember not knowing what to say to him and I just said, |
| 0:49.0 | Rashid, where have you been? |
| 0:51.0 | Where are you? |
| 0:52.0 | And he just said to me, I'm sure you've been where are you and he just said to me I'm sure you've guessed. |
| 0:56.1 | This phone call in 2015 was the first time Nicola Benyahir had heard from a missing teenage son since he disappeared ten weeks before. |
| 1:07.0 | And then I said, just tell me where you are. |
| 1:11.0 | He just said, I'm in Raka. And as soon as obviously he said Raka I knew where |
| 1:15.6 | he had joined and where he was obviously he joined ISIS and was in Syria. Nicola Benyahir was numb here was numb. |
| 1:27.0 | Her 19 year old had just signed up to the world's most infamous militant group, |
| 1:32.0 | the so-called Islamic State in its self-declared capital of Raka. |
| 1:37.0 | Rashid was just one of the thousands of foreign fighters who left their home countries to join |
| 1:42.1 | the militant group in Syria and Iraq, including 900 |
... |
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