Shamima Begum's husband, Jago Riedijk, 'full of contradictions'
Jago Riedijk mostly denies either seeing or doing any of the despicable things Islamic State has become associated with.
Monday 4 March 2019 05:42, UK
The husband of Shamima Begum, Jago Riedijk, is brought into the room as we are readying the camera equipment.
A misunderstanding with the guards means he arrives early, before we are set up.
It takes a few minutes before we notice a small man in an oversized jumper shuffling around in front of us.
Eventually we usher him to his seat for the interview.
Normally I would shake hands and make small talk. Not this time.
As the camera rolls and the questioning starts his narrative is as predictable as it is rehearsed.
Despite being a member of the Islamic State for more than four years he said he never did, or really saw, any of the despicable acts that the world has become accustomed to witnessing from the terror group.
He and his jihadi bride were just two young people seduced online by IS propaganda who made a terrible mistake - or at least that's what he wanted us to believe.
His narrative, though, was full of contradictions.
I begin by asking him what position he held in the so-called Islamic State? "I mainly worked as a welder," he replied.
But Jago Riedijk also fought for IS and when I put that to him he doesn't deny it.
He does, however, claim he fought in only one battle which in his words "didn't work out".
So why, I ask, did he leave his middle-class life in Holland to join the world's most notorious terror group?
"Because we wanted to help the Syrian people. We saw their suffering on the television."
But millions of people around the world saw what IS were really doing to the people of Syria and Iraq: murdering civilians and security forces, displacing hundreds of thousands of families and trying to enforce their own perverse ideology on the populations of those countries.
I ask him whether he'd seen video of homosexuals being thrown from the rooftops of buildings or aid workers and journalists being murdered?
"The things you mentioned either I wasn't aware of that or that happened after I came," he replied.
So, a man who spent more than four years living in the terror state of IS hadn't seen anything?
No executions in town squares? Or people being hanged in public?
"A couple of times, I did. I would see people who were executed. They would leave their bodies to scare the people into submission to show that if you cross the Islamic State this is what happens to you. I did witness that, yeah."
And what about Shamima Begum, the British schoolgirl who travelled to Syria with two friends in 2015.
He says the two met in Raqqa after a friend of his approached him with a proposition.
"Initially I wasn't really interested because of her young age," he said.
I interrupt him and ask how old Shamima was when they first met?
"She was back then 15-years old."
That wasn't a problem, I ask?
"A little bit. That's why I was a bit reluctant," he replies.
She was a child, I tell him. You married a child.
His response?
"Kind of."
When I ask him to recall their time together the former fighter says they got married in Raqqa and his young wife spent most of her time indoors - not interacting with the brutal bureaucracy and security apparatus of the Islamic State extremists.
Riedijk says he understands why people back in Holland would be sceptical of his apparent remorse for joining the extremist group but is adamant his wife is blameless.
"She never really did anything besides being a wife... she has nothing to with the Islamic State. She never had any direct contact, besides her friends, with anyone working in the Islamic State besides from me."
When I tell him the British government wants to revoke her citizenship he tells me it saddens him and he hopes she is given a second-chance.
"Wherever she goes I want to go."