French Mother Radicalized In Paris Takes Son, 4, To Syria To Join ISIS, Quickly Realizes She Has ‘Journeyed Into Hell’


Sophie Kasiki, 34, says that she was converted to Islam and radicalized in Paris where she lived and worked as a social worker helping to settle immigrant families. Kasiki says she quickly became friends with three jihadists and converted to Islam without her husband’s knowledge. She then decided to go to Syria to fight for ISIS and took her 4-year-old son along with her, lying to her husband and telling him she was going to work in an orphanage in Istanbul. However, upon arriving in Raqqa, Syria, she realized that she had “journeyed into hell.”

The Daily Mail reports that 34-year-old Sophie Kasiki was befriended by three jihadists in Paris, France, while working as a social worker for immigrant families. She was then quickly converted to Islam and the jihadi cause. She claims that she converted to Islam without her atheist husband’s knowledge and that he was completely unaware of her plans to go to Syria to fight for the Islamic extremists. Instead, Kasiki says when she made plans to go to the Syrian capital to fight and she lied to her husband and told him she was traveling to Istanbul temporarily to work in an orphanage.

However, Sophie didn’t just put herself in danger by going to Syria to fight with ISIS, she also took along her 4-year-old son. The ISIS-converted French mother says that once she arrived in Syria, which she entered through Turkey with others, she realized she had made a “monumental mistake,” and that she had “journeyed into hell” with her son.

Kasiki says she was placed in a maternity ward to work in squalor as she pleaded with the ISIS fighters to let her go. However, she was told she couldn’t leave and that she may be stoned if she attempted to flee.

“I asked to go home. Every day, I said I missed my family and my son needed to see his father. To begin with they made excuses, then came the threats. They said I was a woman alone with a child and I couldn’t go anywhere, and if I tried to leave I would be stoned or killed.”

In her book, In the Night of Daesh, she claims that when she began to object to the lifestyle, she was placed in a place called a “guest house” which was essentially an ISIS prison. She says a number of other women from Europe were in the home and that she knew she had to escape. However, she was not able to leave the home and her 4-year-old son was increasingly taken away to the mosque and to watch videos of beheadings and other graphic content by the jihadists.

The only way to leave, according to Kasiki, was to marry a jihad fighter. Therefore, she married a man and was taken to his home. She says in an extreme measure of luck, one day the door was open and she ran away with her son. She came across Syrian refugees that risked their lives to take her into hiding in their home and eventually she made it back to the Turkish border and to France.

However, the Islamic convert did not get a welcome greeting when returning back to France. Her husband had been on a frantic search for his wife and her terrorist connections were revealed. She was placed in a French prison for two months while she was interrogated. However, after the two months she was released and her husband took her back. Now, she says she is speaking out in her book to warn others of the dangers in Syria.

“I have felt so guilty. I have asked myself how I can live with what I have done, taking my son to Syria. I have hated those who manipulated me, exploited my naivety, my weakness, my insecurity. I have hated myself.”

On her personal Twitter account, Sophie says that she released the book to prevent others from making the “trip to hell.”

With her book release, many are asking why the mother and ISIS-sympathizer was released from prison and able to write a book about her ordeal. Many feel that since she fought for ISIS in Syria and made the decision to knowingly go into a war-torn region she should have been detained longer. What do you think about the decision to release the woman after having spent time with the militants in Raqqa?

[Image via Amazon]

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