(LibertySociety.com) – At the age of 20, in 2014, Hoda Muthana was attending college in Hoover, Alabama, when the Islamic State (ISIS) recruited the American online, convincing her to travel overseas to join the cause. She reportedly lied to her family about her destination, hopped on a plane to Turkey to make her way to Syria, and married several jihadists to become part of the terrorist group. However, she says she regrets her decision and wants to come back to the United States.
On January 9, Muthana told The News Movement that she would even go to prison willingly if that’s what it would take to gain entry once again into the US. This comes after the Supreme Court denied hearing her case last year, determining that she would remain in a Syrian camp.
The former citizen said in her recent interview that she hopes the American government will take her young age and naivete into consideration. She said she would take everything back in a “heartbeat” if she could. In fact, she said in a 2021 documentary that they “brainwashed” her.
This is Hoda Muthana. When she was 20 she left the US to join ISIS. She's currently living in a prison camp in northern Syria.
After spending four days of getting to know her. Hoda agreed to sit down and talk to us about why she left the US. pic.twitter.com/ZALHw4tIAb
— lucy marley (@lucymarleey) January 9, 2023
About two years after her departure, in 2016, Muthana decided she had made a mistake, so she made a plea to return to the United States with her then-toddler child. The Obama administration informed her at the time that she was not a US citizen and could not return to America. In 2019, she tried again to come back to the country she used to call home. But, in an interview with “Today” early that year, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reaffirmed Muthana was a “terrorist” and “not a US citizen.”
After the SCOTUS denial in 2022, the attorneys who tried to elevate her case and help her back into the US said they weren’t giving up. According to Newsweek, they planned to continue their quest to bring Muthana back to the states but didn’t detail what that would look like. Fox News recently reported that Muthana’s family’s attorney advocated for the woman’s return, arguing she should be given a chance to make amends and keep others from “falling into the dark path” that she did.
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