Husband of UK ISIL bride Shamima Begum wants wife, son to live with him in Holland

Yago Riedijk, 27, the husband of UK ISIL bride, Shamima Begum wants his wife and their new born son to live with him in Holland.

The Dutch national who married Begum after she slipped into the ISIL-held territory in northern Syria via Turkey in 2015, revealed that much in an interview with the BBC.

He said he rejected ISIL and had tried to leave the group after he was tortured by its members who accused him of being a spy for the Netherlands.

Riedijk’s who is being detained in a Kurdish detention centre in northern Syria faces a six-year sentence for “joining a terror organisation” if he returns to the Netherlands.

When asked why he married Begum when she slipped into the ISIL-held territory at the age of 15, Riedijk said; “To be honest, when my friend came and said there was a girl who was interested in marriage, I wasn’t that interested because of her age, but I accepted the offer anyway,” he told the BBC, adding that she had seemed to be “in a good state of mind”.

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“It was her own choice. She asked to look for a partner for her, and I was invited … she was very young, maybe it would have been better for her to wait a bit. But she didn’t, she chose to get married and I chose to marry her.”

19-year-old Begum had earlier revealed that she is making moves to seek Dutch citizenship after she was told the British Home Office had issued an order to revoke her citizenship days after she declared her intention to return home.

According to Begum, one of the three British schoolgirls who left the UK in 2015 to live in ISIL’s so-called “caliphate”, she will explore the option of seeking Dutch citizenship.

She also described the order of the Home Office to revoke her citizenship as ‘kind of heart-breaking.

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