美国国家公共电台 NPR To Syria And Back: How 2 Women Escaped Their Radicalized Husbands

 

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

All right. Over the years, hundreds of people left the U.S. to go fight with ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Only 14 of them came back. Two of them are women with extraordinary and similar stories. Both say their husbands forced them to go, along with their young children. One woman has built a new life for herself in Texas. The other is jailed in Indiana. Here's NPR's Greg Myre.

GREG MYRE, BYLINE¹: By her own account, Samantha Sally had a comfortable life in Elkhart, Ind., with her husband and their children. But on a family vacation to Turkey in 2015, she says her husband, Moussa Elhassani, tricked them into crossing the border into Syria. She described that fateful moment and the abuse that followed to CNN last spring in Syria.

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SAMANTHA SALLY: The position I was in was to stay there with my son or watch my daughter leave with my husband. And I had to make a decision. I thought, like I said, we could just walk across the border, and we could come back again.

MYRE: Once in Syria, her husband joined the Islamic State. The nightmare that unfolded included her 10-year-old son being forced to appear in an ISIS propaganda video.

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UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: This battle is not going to end in Raqqa or Mosul. It's going to end in your lands.

MYRE: These examples involving the wives of extremists are complicated, says Christianne Boudreau.

CHRISTIANNE BOUDREAU: In some cases, the women made a conscious decision. It was theirs and theirs alone.

MYRE: Boudreau is a Canadian who leads a group, Mothers For Life, that seeks to counter radicalization. She started it after her own son ran off to join ISIS and was killed in Syria.

BOUDREAU: In other cases, no, it's an abusive relationship. It's a very complex situation. It's very difficult to determine which of those two that it could be.

MYRE: Samantha Sally's story resonates with Tania Joya, who lives outside Dallas.

TANIA JOYA: I definitely can relate to her.

MYRE: Joya, who spoke² via Skype, is British and Muslim. She moved to Texas in 2003 to marry an American convert to Islam. By 2013, they were living in Egypt with three children and a fourth on the way. Then her husband insisted they go to Syria. Joya resisted.

JOYA: Yeah, I just wasn't prepared to die for Syria. And I didn't - of course, I didn't want my children to die for Syria either.

MYRE: Her husband persisted. With great reluctance³, she agreed to go for two weeks. When her husband decided⁴ to stay longer, she fled with the kids. She called U.S. authorities and asked to be allowed back in the U.S.

JOYA: Finally, they said, OK, we want you back. You can come back, you know, on the condition that you tell us everything you know.

MYRE: Joya returned to Texas, cooperated with U.S. officials and was never charged with a crime. She divorced her husband, who's still believed to be in Syria. She dated for the first time, going on match.com with a very candid⁵ profile.

JOYA: I'm looking for a husband. I have four kids. I want someone older than me. I want (laughter) (unintelligible). And my ex-husband's crazy. And I'm here. And I'm, like, applying for a green card.

MYRE: So how many guys responded to that?

JOYA: Like, 1,300. And then I got, like, top 10 most-reviewed profile of the month. So I was quite pleased about that.

MYRE: One was a man named Craig Burma whom she married in June. Wedding photos show a stylish⁶ bride in a sleeveless lemon dress, a woman transformed from the one who used to wear a traditional Islamic hijab.

JOYA: I'm just trying to rebuild my life, you know, from scratch. And it helps that I'm married.

MYRE: Happy endings are the exception for the roughly 70 Americans, mostly men, known to have traveled to Syria and Iraq. Some died on the battlefield. Of the 14 returnees to the U.S., 11 have been prosecuted⁷, according to George Washington University's program on extremism, which brings us back to Samantha Sally, the woman from Indiana.

TOM DURKIN: I'm not a psychiatrist⁸. But if she's not suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder⁹, I'll be surprised.

MYRE: Tom Durkin is a lawyer, and he represents Sally. She spent most of the past three years in Raqqa, the Syrian city that served as the ISIS capital. She says her husband not only fought for ISIS, he bought two teenage girls as slaves and raped¹⁰ them in their home. She says she was also abused. She gave birth to two more children in Raqqa and now has four altogether. While largely cut off from the outside world, she had occasional contact with her family. Again, Tom Durkin.

DURKIN: She has strong family support. They're behind her all the way.

MYRE: Sally's husband was killed last year as the U.S. reduced Raqqa to rubble¹¹. The U.S. military picked up Sally and her kids from a detention¹² camp run by a Kurdish militia¹³ and flew them to Indiana on July 24. She's now in jail, charged with lying to the FBI but not with supporting ISIS. The state of Indiana currently has custody¹⁴ of her kids.

DURKIN: She needs help more than she needs prosecution¹⁵.

MYRE: Samantha Sally's trial is set for September. Greg Myre, NPR News, Washington.

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1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

3 reluctance   

n.厌恶，讨厌，勉强，不情愿

参考例句：

• The police released Andrew with reluctance.警方勉强把安德鲁放走了。
• He showed the greatest reluctance to make a reply.他表示很不愿意答复。

4 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

5 candid   

adj.公正的，正直的；坦率的

参考例句：

• I cannot but hope the candid reader will give some allowance for it.我只有希望公正的读者多少包涵一些。
• He is quite candid with his friends.他对朋友相当坦诚。

6 stylish   

adj.流行的，时髦的；漂亮的，气派的

参考例句：

• He's a stylish dresser.他是个穿着很有格调的人。
• What stylish women are wearing in Paris will be worn by women all over the world.巴黎女性时装往往会引导世界时装潮流。

7 prosecuted   

a.被起诉的

参考例句：

• The editors are being prosecuted for obscenity. 编辑因刊载污秽文字而被起诉。
• The company was prosecuted for breaching the Health and Safety Act. 这家公司被控违反《卫生安全条例》。

8 psychiatrist   

n.精神病专家；精神病医师

参考例句：

• He went to a psychiatrist about his compulsive gambling.他去看精神科医生治疗不能自拔的赌瘾。
• The psychiatrist corrected him gently.精神病医师彬彬有礼地纠正他。

9 disorder   

n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调

参考例句：

• When returning back,he discovered the room to be in disorder.回家后，他发现屋子里乱七八糟。
• It contained a vast number of letters in great disorder.里面七零八落地装着许多信件。

10 raped   

v.以暴力夺取，强夺( rape的过去式和过去分词 )；强奸

参考例句：

• A young woman was brutally raped in her own home. 一名年轻女子在自己家中惨遭强暴。 来自辞典例句
• We got stick together, or we will be having our women raped. 我们得团结一致，不然我们的妻女就会遭到蹂躏。 来自辞典例句

11 rubble   

n.（一堆）碎石，瓦砾

参考例句：

• After the earthquake,it took months to clean up the rubble.地震后，花了数月才清理完瓦砾。
• After the war many cities were full of rubble.战后许多城市到处可见颓垣残壁。

12 detention   

n.滞留，停留；拘留，扣留；(教育)留下

参考例句：

• He was kept in detention by the police.他被警察扣留了。
• He was in detention in connection with the bribery affair.他因与贿赂事件有牵连而被拘留了。

13 militia   

n.民兵，民兵组织

参考例句：

• First came the PLA men,then the people's militia.人民解放军走在前面，其次是民兵。
• There's a building guarded by the local militia at the corner of the street.街道拐角处有一幢由当地民兵团守卫的大楼。

14 custody   

n.监护，照看，羁押，拘留

参考例句：

• He spent a week in custody on remand awaiting sentence.等候判决期间他被还押候审一个星期。
• He was taken into custody immediately after the robbery.抢劫案发生后，他立即被押了起来。

15 prosecution   

n.起诉，告发，检举，执行，经营

参考例句：

• The Smiths brought a prosecution against the organizers.史密斯家对组织者们提出起诉。
• He attempts to rebut the assertion made by the prosecution witness.他试图反驳原告方证人所作的断言。