A Swedish Girl, ISIS and a Cautionary Tale of Global Terrorism, It was a running-away-from-home daydream for the age of all-around terrorism. Marilyn Nevalainen, a abundant teenager, absitively to chase her admirer endure year if he set out to allowance jihad, abrogation the lakes and forests of southwest Sweden for activity beneath the Islamic State in the arid calefaction of Iraq.
Apparently defective any bright abstraction of what she was accepting herself into, she concluded up with militants abreast Mosul, with a new babyish to affliction for and her admirer asleep on an Iraqi battlefield.
Remarkably, Ms. Nevalainen, now 16, and her baby son fabricated it out alive. Much charcoal alien about how she angry up two weeks ago in Kurdish-controlled arctic Iraq, and she has not announced about above a abrupt television annual in which she arguable that she had followed her admirer afterwards alive “what ISIS means, what Islam is, nothing.” She is now aback in Sweden.
Europe has been afflicted for several years by the amount of its adolescent humans who accept run off to accompany the Islamic State, and is added anxious about the abeyant for them to appear home to backpack out agitator acts in their built-in countries. Ms. Nevalainen stands out as a attenuate case in which a adolescent European went accidentally into the affection of jihadist territory, catastrophe up with the Islamic State, aswell accepted as ISIS or ISIL, and was freed.
Her adventure seems beneath one of credo than of boyish affront and naïveté gone afield in a apple where, with a bit of determination, a adolescent woman can biking advisedly from Sweden to the war zones of the Middle East.
The additional of at atomic four daughters of Pasi and Ann-Kristin Nevalainen, she grew up in a apple in Sweden’s rural Mark municipality. It was a adolescence afflicted abundant that her ancestors voluntarily placed her in the affliction of a advance family, according to neighbors and amusing casework officials.
“She was a botheration girl,” said a longtime neighbor, who batten on the action that she be articular alone as Annika. “She didn’t like to go to academy and the parents approved to advice her, but they were too backward and she went away. If she didn’t get to do what she wanted, she rebelled.”
Annika knew the Nevalainen ancestors from if they lived in Lekvad, a apple of ambagious alluvium roads, all-inclusive fields and few people. If night falls, the alone lights are from the lanterns on abroad acreage porches.
By Ms. Nevalainen’s account, accustomed on Kurdish television already she was out of the Islamic State’s territory, she alone out of academy if she was 14 and fell for her boyfriend, a Muslim from North Africa who was 5 years earlier and had immigrated to Sweden on his own by 2012, according to annal from the Swedish clearing board.
It was a little beneath than a year afterwards they met that the brace larboard for Syria, in the summer of 2015.
In a arrant video that appears to be addressed to her parents and was acquired by a Swedish tabloid, the Aftonbladet, a barbate adolescent man who seems to be her admirer and identifies himself as Mokhtar Mohammed Ahmed speaks into the camera in Swedish, saying, “You can just overlook about this little girl, because she is never advancing back.”
The affairs of how she eventually did appear aback abide unclear. Senior Kurdish admiral say she was rescued on Feb. 17 by Kurdish appropriate armament afterwards a attack getting fired. The admiral said they were able to locate her application advice acquired from her casual use of the Internet, but they offered no details.
A sheikh interviewed in the Kurdish city-limits of Erbil said he had been approached to try to get her out by the girl’s uncle, who he said formed for Unicef. The sheikh said he had accustomed photos of landmarks from Tel Keif, a apple abreast Mosul, that Ms. Nevalainen was able to forward to analyze her whereabouts. He claimed he had been able to align her escape with smugglers and was declared to be paid $35,000. He said that the next affair he knew, he saw the babe on television — and that he had never been paid.
The absolution of foreigners by the Islamic State is rare; a lot of cases accept complex ransoms. Kurdish admiral denied that any bribe was paid, and the Swedish government and the girl’s parents accept beneath to accommodate any details.
Ms. Nevalainen’s case highlights how even villages in the affection of rural Sweden are grappling with the attendance of accretion numbers of Muslim refugees, some of whom may accompany with them preconceptions about the West and even allegiances to groups in ablaze Middle East conflicts.
In his video, the adolescent man believed to be Ms. Nevalainen’s admirer says the acumen he and Marilyn larboard Sweden was racism.
“You accept affected me to leave because you would not let the two of us reside in peace,” he said. He says with anger: “I can’t reside there because they are racists. I can’t reside with racist people. Damn racists.”
Kurdish admiral said he was dead angry in Ramadi, in western Iraq, ancient endure fall. It is not bright if Ms. Nevalainen was affected to ally addition fighter or lived with added women.
The amount and activities of extremists in Sweden has developed abundantly over the accomplished 15 years, according to agitation experts. Sweden now has added ambitious jihadists per capita traveling to action for agitator groups than any European country added than Belgium, according to a 2015 abstraction by the International Center for the Abstraction of Radicalization and Political Violence.
Recruiters for the Islamic State and for Al Qaeda affiliates alive in Syria and added groups, including the Shabab, ambition the additional bearing of immigrants, agitation experts said.
“The affair of the adopted fighters is absolutely austere accustomed the numbers, but until endure year there were actual few barriers to humans going,” said Magnus Ranstorp, the analysis administrator at the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish Defense University.
Ms. Nevalainen’s grandfather, Tenho Nevalainen, told a bounded bi-weekly that her parents were afraid about her communication with Mr. Ahmed.
“The ancestors approved to accumulate her abroad from him,” he said.
In her annual on Kurdish television, Ms. Nevalainen said, “At aboriginal we were acceptable together, but again he started to attending at ISIS videos and alpha to allege about them and being like that, and I don’t apperceive annihilation about Islam, or ISIS, or something, so I didn’t apperceive what he meant.”
When her admirer said he capital to go action for ISIS, “I say to him, ‘O.K., no problem,’ because I didn’t apperceive what ISIS means, what Islam is, nothing.”
Soon afterwards she accustomed in Mosul she began to ability out to her mother, according to her own account. In the television interview, she said it “was a absolutely harder life” there.
“In the abode we didn’t accept annihilation — no electricity, no baptize — and it was absolutely altered from our activity in Sweden,” she said. (The man believed to be her boyfriend, in his video, said she lacked for nothing.)
An antecedent accomplishment to accomplishment her, in October, failed, according to several humans abutting to the family. Her grandfathering declared that accomplishment attack as “botched.”
Those who apperceive her and her ancestors said they capital her accession to augur well, but they articulate unsure.
“You accept to achievement that it goes able-bodied for her in the future,” said Lisbeth Pehrsson, who lived beyond the artery from the ancestors for abounding years. “And for her little boy, I achievement so.”
Apparently defective any bright abstraction of what she was accepting herself into, she concluded up with militants abreast Mosul, with a new babyish to affliction for and her admirer asleep on an Iraqi battlefield.Remarkably, Ms. Nevalainen, now 16, and her baby son fabricated it out alive. Much charcoal alien about how she angry up two weeks ago in Kurdish-controlled arctic Iraq, and she has not announced about above a abrupt television annual in which she arguable that she had followed her admirer afterwards alive “what ISIS means, what Islam is, nothing.” She is now aback in Sweden.
Europe has been afflicted for several years by the amount of its adolescent humans who accept run off to accompany the Islamic State, and is added anxious about the abeyant for them to appear home to backpack out agitator acts in their built-in countries. Ms. Nevalainen stands out as a attenuate case in which a adolescent European went accidentally into the affection of jihadist territory, catastrophe up with the Islamic State, aswell accepted as ISIS or ISIL, and was freed.
Her adventure seems beneath one of credo than of boyish affront and naïveté gone afield in a apple where, with a bit of determination, a adolescent woman can biking advisedly from Sweden to the war zones of the Middle East.
The additional of at atomic four daughters of Pasi and Ann-Kristin Nevalainen, she grew up in a apple in Sweden’s rural Mark municipality. It was a adolescence afflicted abundant that her ancestors voluntarily placed her in the affliction of a advance family, according to neighbors and amusing casework officials.
“She was a botheration girl,” said a longtime neighbor, who batten on the action that she be articular alone as Annika. “She didn’t like to go to academy and the parents approved to advice her, but they were too backward and she went away. If she didn’t get to do what she wanted, she rebelled.”
Annika knew the Nevalainen ancestors from if they lived in Lekvad, a apple of ambagious alluvium roads, all-inclusive fields and few people. If night falls, the alone lights are from the lanterns on abroad acreage porches.
By Ms. Nevalainen’s account, accustomed on Kurdish television already she was out of the Islamic State’s territory, she alone out of academy if she was 14 and fell for her boyfriend, a Muslim from North Africa who was 5 years earlier and had immigrated to Sweden on his own by 2012, according to annal from the Swedish clearing board.
It was a little beneath than a year afterwards they met that the brace larboard for Syria, in the summer of 2015.
In a arrant video that appears to be addressed to her parents and was acquired by a Swedish tabloid, the Aftonbladet, a barbate adolescent man who seems to be her admirer and identifies himself as Mokhtar Mohammed Ahmed speaks into the camera in Swedish, saying, “You can just overlook about this little girl, because she is never advancing back.”
The affairs of how she eventually did appear aback abide unclear. Senior Kurdish admiral say she was rescued on Feb. 17 by Kurdish appropriate armament afterwards a attack getting fired. The admiral said they were able to locate her application advice acquired from her casual use of the Internet, but they offered no details.
A sheikh interviewed in the Kurdish city-limits of Erbil said he had been approached to try to get her out by the girl’s uncle, who he said formed for Unicef. The sheikh said he had accustomed photos of landmarks from Tel Keif, a apple abreast Mosul, that Ms. Nevalainen was able to forward to analyze her whereabouts. He claimed he had been able to align her escape with smugglers and was declared to be paid $35,000. He said that the next affair he knew, he saw the babe on television — and that he had never been paid.
The absolution of foreigners by the Islamic State is rare; a lot of cases accept complex ransoms. Kurdish admiral denied that any bribe was paid, and the Swedish government and the girl’s parents accept beneath to accommodate any details.
Ms. Nevalainen’s case highlights how even villages in the affection of rural Sweden are grappling with the attendance of accretion numbers of Muslim refugees, some of whom may accompany with them preconceptions about the West and even allegiances to groups in ablaze Middle East conflicts.
In his video, the adolescent man believed to be Ms. Nevalainen’s admirer says the acumen he and Marilyn larboard Sweden was racism.
“You accept affected me to leave because you would not let the two of us reside in peace,” he said. He says with anger: “I can’t reside there because they are racists. I can’t reside with racist people. Damn racists.”
Kurdish admiral said he was dead angry in Ramadi, in western Iraq, ancient endure fall. It is not bright if Ms. Nevalainen was affected to ally addition fighter or lived with added women.
The amount and activities of extremists in Sweden has developed abundantly over the accomplished 15 years, according to agitation experts. Sweden now has added ambitious jihadists per capita traveling to action for agitator groups than any European country added than Belgium, according to a 2015 abstraction by the International Center for the Abstraction of Radicalization and Political Violence.
Recruiters for the Islamic State and for Al Qaeda affiliates alive in Syria and added groups, including the Shabab, ambition the additional bearing of immigrants, agitation experts said.
“The affair of the adopted fighters is absolutely austere accustomed the numbers, but until endure year there were actual few barriers to humans going,” said Magnus Ranstorp, the analysis administrator at the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish Defense University.
Ms. Nevalainen’s grandfather, Tenho Nevalainen, told a bounded bi-weekly that her parents were afraid about her communication with Mr. Ahmed.
“The ancestors approved to accumulate her abroad from him,” he said.
In her annual on Kurdish television, Ms. Nevalainen said, “At aboriginal we were acceptable together, but again he started to attending at ISIS videos and alpha to allege about them and being like that, and I don’t apperceive annihilation about Islam, or ISIS, or something, so I didn’t apperceive what he meant.”
When her admirer said he capital to go action for ISIS, “I say to him, ‘O.K., no problem,’ because I didn’t apperceive what ISIS means, what Islam is, nothing.”
Soon afterwards she accustomed in Mosul she began to ability out to her mother, according to her own account. In the television interview, she said it “was a absolutely harder life” there.
“In the abode we didn’t accept annihilation — no electricity, no baptize — and it was absolutely altered from our activity in Sweden,” she said. (The man believed to be her boyfriend, in his video, said she lacked for nothing.)
An antecedent accomplishment to accomplishment her, in October, failed, according to several humans abutting to the family. Her grandfathering declared that accomplishment attack as “botched.”
Those who apperceive her and her ancestors said they capital her accession to augur well, but they articulate unsure.
“You accept to achievement that it goes able-bodied for her in the future,” said Lisbeth Pehrsson, who lived beyond the artery from the ancestors for abounding years. “And for her little boy, I achievement so.”
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