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2021-04-01 Syria-Lebanon-Iran
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French IS Widow in Syria Camp, Veil-Free, Wants to 'Go Home'
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[AnNahar] In a Syrian detention camp for people linked to the Islamic State
 ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
group, French mother-of-five Emilie Konig has swapped her all-engulfing black robe for a sweatshirt and baseball cap.
In Mufti
| Betcha she still has the Moving Black Object outfit on a hook by the door so she can throw it over her French clothes when she leaves the house. Those ISIS morals police wives reportedly get difficult when their little rules are challenged. |
The 36-year-old widow -- who is on UN and US blacklists of dangerous bully boys, accused of recruiting IS fighters and inciting attacks in the West -- says she's now desperate to go home.
Continued from Page 2
Joining IS "wrecked" her life, said Konig, who was captured in late 2017 by Kurdish forces battling the jihadists in the eastern Syrian town of Shadadi.
"I want to go home to La Belle France," she told AFP. "I have my family there. I want to start my life over and right my mistakes."
Konig -- who frequently appeared in IS propaganda videos, including in a 2013 clip showing her training with a shotgun -- now lives in the Kurdish-run Roj camp in northeast Syria.
Now sporting a hooded top, faux leather leggings and white hightop trainers, she said: "I'm already dressing ... to get used to my returning".
She said she hopes to work as an accountant back in La Belle France -- even if Gay Paree has been reluctant to repatriate citizens with IS links and would likely seek to try them on terror-related charges.
"When I do return, I won't be able to wear" a veil, she said, her dark, blond-streaked hair braided into a plait under her Yankees cap. "In the job I want to do... you can't wear it."
- ONLINE ENCOUNTER -
Syria's Kurds hold thousands of foreigners in their custody after leading the U.S.-backed battle that ousted IS from its last patch of territory two years ago.
Of those, 800 European families associated with the jihadist group and 100 Syrian and Iraqi families live in Roj, according to a camp official.
Konig is vague about what pushed her to leave La Belle France in 2012, one year into Syria's civil war.
She says she arrived in Syria after she "met someone online" and agreed to marry him, becoming one of the first of hundreds of French citizens to join IS.
If allowed to return, she said she would like to take more classes to improve her accounting skills, and to start afresh for her five children, aged four to 16, who are all in La Belle France.
She sent home in January the three youngest children, born to her late French and Belgian husbands -- a six-year-old boy and twin girls aged four.
"Since they left, not a day has gone by that I haven't thought of them," she said.
- 'LONG LIVE LA BELLE FRANCE' -
Inside the dusty camp, a child pushed a kick scooter along a thin tarmac road beyond rows of white tents, while another played on a makeshift swing.
Women covered from head to toe in purple or blue robes -- instead of the typical black outfit worn under IS -- queued to get into a small market.
But others were dressed in more fashionable, modern clothing, and said they -- like Konig -- were ready to be repatriated.
"We want to go home," one of them told AFP, sunglasses on the top of her head and dark hair tied in a ponytail.
Another woman, with large white sunglasses and her hair bound up in a scarf above the neck, said: "We want to be repatriated."
"Long live La Belle France," chimed in a third woman with curly blond hair worn loose.
- 'MOST DANGEROUS PEOPLE' -
Roj is one of two Kurdish-run camps housing foreign family members of suspected IS fighters.
It is smaller and better guarded than its overcrowded counterpart al-Hol, which has been rocked by liquidations and breakout attempts in recent months.
The United Nations
...the Oyster Bay money pit...
said the cost of being smuggled out of Roj can run as high as $14,000, compared to just $2,500-3,000 from al-Hol.
"We try to transfer the most dangerous people" here, the camp official told AFP. "We're trying to relieve the pressure off al-Hol."
Roj camp management "has banned covering the face and wearing black clothes," the camp official said.
She said those who have started wearing modern clothing again "are trying to convince their governments to repatriate them".
But she added she believes that only a few were truly repentant.
- 'I'M A PRISONER' -
Konig said she was so desperate to see her children, she went on hunger strike in early March -- but quit after eight days believing "there was no point".
Nonetheless, she added that "I hope one day to see my children again, that all six of us will sit around the same table".
The Kurdish authorities have repeatedly called on more than 50 countries to repatriate the men, women and kiddies from their jails and displacements camps.
But their home nations have largely been reluctant.
In La Belle France, relatives and rights groups have urged Gay Paree to bring back around 80 women and 200 children, including from Roj.
But the French authorities, reeling from a string of deadly IS-inspired attacks, have instead brought only some home on a case by case basis.
Konig urged the French authorities to "really analyze everybody" individually before deciding.
"I'm a prisoner here," she said, claiming she had lost some teeth and was suffering from hip and knee problems.
"I don't have a phone, I don't have my children, living conditions are difficult."
Konig said she knows returning to La Belle France won't be easy but that she is ready.
"I don't care about people not accepting me," she said. "I live for myself, my children and my family." 
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Posted by trailing wife 2021-04-01 00:13||
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