The following article was originally published in The Australian on July 14th, 2016.
A young Dutch mother has been rescued from an Islamic State stronghold in Iraq after a raid organised by her father.
The woman, who gave her name as Laura Angela Hansen, 21, escaped with her two sons, Iman, four, and one-year-old Abdullah. The children were slightly injured during an artillery bombardment as they fled the city of Mosul.
Mother went to Raqqa after being tricked by husband
She claimed that her husband tricked her into travelling to the Isis-controlled city of Raqqa last September after telling her they would take a holiday in Turkey. The Muslim convert was shown smiling with relief on Kurdish television after her rescue by a unit of Kurdish special forces.
“I was trying all the time to escape the hell in which I was living,” she told an interviewer from the television broadcaster Kurdistan 24, before thanking her Kurdish Peshmerga rescuers.
“Thank God I am safe,” she said in English, adding that Isis fighters had described the Kurds as “very hard men”.
“It is not like this,” she said. “The Peshmerga took my hand. They helped me with everything. They are such good people. I am so happy. This is really what I want to say to them.”
The raid on Tuesday had been organised by her father, who established contact with his daughter inside Mosul.
“My father got in contact with Peshmerga leaders,” she said. “The Peshmerga told him: ‘We have people who take people out of Mosul and bring them to Kurdistan.’ ”
Dutch mother third westerner to be rescued by Kurds
Ms Hansen is the third westerner to escape from Isis control and flee into the Kurdish-held area of Iraq. All have subsequently given interviews describing their regret at having gone to Isis-held territory.
In March an American-Palestinian Isis volunteer, Mohamad Jamal Khweis, 26, explained his dash to freedom after travelling to Syria through London. He said that he was lucky not to be shot as he fled from an Isis frontline position and raced across no man’s land. He was eventually captured near Mosul. He told a press conference that life in the so-called caliphate was “very bad”.
“Daesh does not represent a religion,” the criminal law graduate from Virginia claimed. “I don’t see them as good Muslims.”
In February, a 15-year-old Swedish girl, Marlin Stivani Nivarlain, was rescued by Kurdish special forces. She claimed that her boyfriend had tricked her into going to Syria, where she became pregnant and gave birth.
Ms Hansen said she was born in The Hague but lived in the town of Zoetermeer. She converted to Islam at the age of 14 but did not start practising the religion until she was 17. She met her German Palestinian husband through a Muslim dating website and became pregnant with his child.
She said he was “very aggressive” and neighbours made frequent complaints to the police to report him for domestic abuse. “I was pregnant,” she said. “I didn’t want a divorce.”
When she gave birth, the couple were given a house by social services and later took a holiday in Turkey.
“He said the border was not so far, we took the bus,” she told Kurdistan 24 after her rescue, still dressed in a veil and ankle-length black clothing. Ms Hansen said that she believed they were going to visit refugee camps to distribute aid money but she was persuaded to cross into Syria.
“I did not know I was going,” she said. “He pushed me to go to Syria. Then we went to Raqqa. They put me in a house. It was guarded by men. Men with beards and guns. We could not go out.”
The Dutch authorities declined to confirm the woman’s name but said that a citizen of the Netherlands had sought embassy assistance in Iraq.
After incursions made by Iraqi and Kurdish ground forces, Isis has lost half its territory in Iraq and a fifth in Syria.
Access the above article originally published in The Australian here.
