Coming soon... The Shamima Begum Story

I'm Not a Monster

BBC

Documentary, Society & Culture, True Crime

4.8 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 31 August 2022

⏱️ 1 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Seeking to separate fact from fiction, the multi award-winning series returns to investigate the divisive story of Shamima Begum. When three London school girls went missing in 2015, they generated global headlines and the media storm that ensued continues to this day. Back then, investigative journalist Josh Baker was filming at a mosque in the girls’ neighbourhood as their families came to seek help; their daughters were on the way to Syria to join the Islamic State group. But it was too late, and they disappeared inside the so-called caliphate. For four years, their fate remained a mystery - with only occasional glimpses and sometimes conflicting reports of what they were doing with the terror group being made public. Only one of the girls emerged from the ashes of the so called caliphate - Shamima Begum. The new series takes listeners inside Josh’s attempts to figure out what really happened, unearthing new information about one of the most talked about stories of our time. He travels from Bethnal Green in East London to the depths of what was ISIS controlled Syria as he challenges Shamima Begum and investigates if the story she tells is true.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, we're getting close to the launch of the new series of I'm Not A Monster, and so
0:06.2	I wanted to tell you a bit about it.
0:09.0	Seven years ago I was filming East London Mosque when the story broke the three school girls
0:14.6	from the area had gone missing.
0:17.1	They were headed for Syria to join ISIS.
0:19.7	Their story shocked the world.
0:23.9	People wanted to know why the teenage girls chose to join the Islamic State group, how
0:28.4	they got to war on Syria and whether they could be brought home.
0:33.4	Four years later, Shamima Begum was the only one of the girls to emerge from the ashes
0:38.6	of the so-called caliphate.
0:41.8	The UK government says she's a threat to national security and has stripped her of her citizenship.
0:47.5	And so today, she's trapped in a prison camp at the edge of the desert in Syria.
0:53.5	For more than a year I've been travelling there to meet her and hear her story.
0:58.2	For the first time she's given me what she says is her full account of everything that
1:02.4	happened.
1:04.0	And so I've retraced her steps from the UK through Turkey and into Syria to find people who
1:09.9	knew her when she was with ISIS and investigate the truth of her story.
1:16.1	You can hear it all in I'm Not A Monster Series 2, the Shamima Begum story.
1:22.0	Coming soon from BBC Sounds and Five Live.
1:25.7	Subscribe now so you don't miss the first episode.

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