Swedish Girl Who Ran Away to Iraq Says She Had Not Heard of ISIS
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Version 0 of 1. A Swedish teenager rescued from the Islamic State said she had never heard of the militant group known as ISIS before running away with her boyfriend to join the extremists at their base in Iraq. After she was freed by Kurdish special forces, the teenager, Marilyn Nevalainen, told the Kurdish television station K24 in Erbil, Iraq, that she “didn’t know what ISIS means, or Islam” until her boyfriend suggested in 2014 that they leave Sweden to join the group. “First we were good together, but then he started to look at ISIS videos,” Ms. Nevalainen, 16, said in the interview. “He said he wanted to go to ISIS and I said no problem.” The couple boarded a train in May 2015 and traveled across Europe to Turkey. From there, they went to Syria and then took a bus, operated by the Islamic State, to Mosul, Iraq, a city controlled by the militants. The interview broadcast on Tuesday raised more questions than it answered about how a young girl who had never heard of the Islamic State ended up in a hotbed of the insurgency. Ms. Nevalainen’s story sounded similar to dozens of accounts by young European women who have been lured to Iraq and Syria by militants. Those who make the journey ultimately find themselves living in a war zone controlled by religious extremists, unable to leave their homes and sometimes subjected to physical and sexual abuse. Once in Mosul, Ms. Nevalainen said life was sparse. “When I was there I didn’t have anything,” she said. “No water. No electricity. I didn’t have any money either. It was a really hard life.” Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, was the first to fall to the Islamic State in 2014. The city remains a site of regular fighting between Islamic State militants, the Iraqi Army and local militias, as well as a target of airstrikes by an American-led coalition. After some time in Iraq, Ms. Nevalainen said she was given a mobile phone and she called her mother, telling her she wanted to return to her hometown, Boras, 39 miles east of Gothenburg. The Swedish authorities contacted the Iraqi Kurdish government and asked for help. It is not known whether the girl’s parents had previously contacted the authorities after she ran away. In the K24 interview, Ms. Nevalainen appeared healthy, well fed and unharmed, even giggling at one point after she thanked Kurdish officials for their help. Kurdish officials have said she will be returned to Sweden, but did not say when. |