Simon Cottee

The warped world of the British Isis fugitive Tooba Gondal​

Tooba Gondal, a notorious female Isis recruiter from Britain, was until Sunday a captive in the Ain Issa camp in north-eastern Syria. Now that the camp has fallen amid the chaos that is unfolding in the region, she is free again, as are hundreds of the other foreign denizens of the camp she was housed with. Her whereabouts are currently unknown.

In April the Rojava Information Center in Syria published an interview with Tooba Gondal in which she expressed her desire to return to the UK with her children. It is possible that this is now where she is headed. Gondal, 25, is wily, resourceful and tough – and probably in possession of a mobile phone. So who knows where she will end up? The British authorities should at least be prepared for her arrival (unless she rejoins her Isis comrades and disappears into the desert). Two things must happen if she does return: her children should be separated from her and she should be charged under existing UK

Written by
Simon Cottee
Simon Cottee is a senior lecturer in criminology at the University of Kent and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. His latest book, Watching Murder: ISIS, Death Videos and Radicalisation, is out with Routledge

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