'Big Mistake': German girl who Joined ISIS at age 15, asks to go home

Agencies
February 2, 2019

Baghouz, Feb 2: Four years after leaving Germany to live under the ISIS group, 19-year-old Leonora has fled the terrorists' last bastion in eastern Syria and says it's time to go home.
"I was a little bit naive," she says in English, wearing a long billowing black robe, and a beige headscarf with white spots.

US-backed forces are fighting the last ISIS terrorists in a final shred of territory in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border, causing thousands of people to flee.

Just beyond the frontline village of Baghouz, Leonora and her two small children are among the thousands of men, women and children to have scrambled out this week.

The young German woman says she first came to Syria aged 15, just two months after converting to Islam.

"After three days, I married my German husband," she tells AFP, at a screening centre for the displaced run by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.

Leonora says she became the third wife of German terrorist Martin Lemke, after he travelled to Syria with his first two wives.

ISIS had the year before swept across large swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq, declaring a "caliphate" in areas it controlled.

Leonora first lived in the terrorist group's de-facto Syrian capital of Raqa, but says she was just a housewife.

"I was just at home, in (the) house cooking, cleaning -- stuff like this," says the pale faced German, clutching the youngest of her two children, an infant aged just two weeks.

'Change House Every Week'

Syria's Kurdish authorities hold hundreds of foreign alleged ISIS fighters in detention, as well as thousands of their wives and children in camps for the displaced.

The Kurds have repeatedly urged Western governments to take back their nationals, but these powers have been reluctant.

At first life in Raqa was easy, Leonora says, but that changed when the SDF started advancing against the terrorists, with support from US-led coalition air strikes.

The Kurdish-led SDF overran Raqa in 2017, after years of what residents described as ISIS's brutal rule, which included public beheading and crucifixions.

"Then they lose Raqa, and we started to change our house every week because they lost every week a city," she says.

When they came under attack by the Kurdish-led SDF, Leonora says the ISIS fighters left their families to fend for themselves.

"They left the women alone, no food, they don't care about you," she says. The enemy was advancing "and you were sitting alone in an empty city with your kids".

They ended up in a tiny patch on the eastern banks of the Euphrates in Deir Ezzor province.

The SDF have cornered ISIS into a patch of less than four square kilometres in recent days.

'Big, Big Mistake'

Eventually, she says, she picked up her children, and fled with her husband, and his second wife into SDF-held territory.

US-backed forces detained Lemke on Thursday.

Leonora claims Lemke worked mostly as a technician for ISIS.

"He makes technical stuff, computer stuff, repairs computer, mobiles," she says.

But investigations published in German newspapers portray Lemke, who is now believed to be 28, as an influential figure among foreign terrorists in Syria.

More than 36,000 people have fled the SDF assault on the so-called "Hajin pocket" since early December, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor that relies on a network of sources inside the country.

Among them, 3,200 have been detained as alleged terrorists.

On arid farmland near Baghouz, a group of men sit on the ground as SDF and coalition personnel stroll nearby.

Not far off, a group of women and their children -- most from neighbouring Iraq -- wait to be driven north to a Kurdish-held camp for the displaced.

After four years under a now near-extinct ISIS caliphate, Leonora says she wants to go home.

"I want to go back to Germany to my family, because I want my old life back," she says.

"Now I know that it was a big, big mistake."

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News Network
April 28,2024

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Campuses of several US Universities have been witnessing massive protests with the students seeking a ceasefire in Israel's war with Hamas. Police have arrested over 550 protesters and some universities are witnessing violent crackdown of protests by the ruthless cops. 

Law enforcement officials at the behest of college administrators have deployed tasers and tear gas against students protesters at Atlanta's Emory University, even though the protests have been largely peaceful, say activists and media personnel present at the spot.

Emil' Keme, professor of English and Indigenous studies, at the University said that the scene reminded him of the civil war in Guatemala as a teenager.

"Police immediately began to force people to move. I felt like I was in a war zone, with all the police and their weapons, the rubber bullets. We were pushed away," Mr Keme told the Guardian describing what happened as soon as cops entered the Emory campus.

“Police took the student next to me, pushed an older lady nearby and then pushed me.”

Student protesters say they are expressing solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, where the confirmed death toll has topped 34,305, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry. They want universities to cut their investments in everything tied to Israel and weapons that fuel the war in Gaza. That means funds run by BlackRock, Google as well as Amazon's cloud service, Lockheed Martin and even Airbnb.

Video circulated widely on social media shows two women who identified themselves as professors being detained, with one of them slammed to the ground by one officer as a second officer then pushes her chest and face onto a concrete sidewalk.

Atlanta police and Georgia troopers are leading a joint operation within the campus to dismantle the tents and camps the activists have set up at the school's quadrangle. Within minutes of the authorities entering the campus, 28 people, 20 of whom were "Emory community members", had been arrested, the institute said in a statement.

The school president said that the videos of police clashing with the students "are shocking" and that he is "horrified horrified that members of our community had to experience and witness such interactions."

The university's response was likely the quickest show of police force in response to a divestment protest among the dozens nationwide that have occurred in recent weeks. It was also probably the only one where pepper balls, stun guns and rubber bullets were used.

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News Network
April 28,2024

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Students in Paris blocked access to a campus building at a French university on Friday, as pro-Palestine demonstrations reach Europe.

The students occupied the central campus building of the Paris Institute of Political Studies, known as Sciences Po, and dozens of others blocked its entrance, echoing protest action at American universities.

Students inspired by Gaza solidarity encampments at campuses in the United States blocked access to a campus building at the prestigious French university on Friday.

They blocked the entrance with trash cans, wooden platforms and other items.

The occupation of the Paris university campus came after police broke up a separate protest at the university’s amphitheater outside one of its Paris campuses.

Scores of student protesters gathered at the building’s windows, chanting slogans and holding placards reading “We are all Palestinians,” in defiance of administrators who students say called the police on their peers two days earlier.

Pro-Palestinian student protesters had occupied the amphitheater outside one of the university’s Paris campuses on Wednesday evening.

The US-style student protests, which began over the months-long Israeli regime’s genocidal war against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, kicked off in the United States and have now spread to European capitals as well as Australia.

In the German capital Berlin, several people were arrested as police violently cleared a camp of Gaza war protesters at the German parliament.

Pro-Palestinian activists are demanding a permanent ceasefire, an end to the Israeli atrocities, and an arms embargo of the Tel Aviv regime.

The Israeli regime launched the war on Gaza on October 7 last year. The genocidal war has killed more than 34,356 Palestinians, most of them women and children.

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News Network
April 14,2024

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New Delhi: A 24-year-old student from India was shot dead inside a car in Canada's South Vancouver, the local police have said. The Vancouver Police in a statement said Chirag Antil, 24, was found dead inside a vehicle in the area after neighbours reported hearing gunshots.

"Officers were called to East 55th Avenue and Main Street around 11 pm on April 12 after residents heard the sound of gunshots. Chirag Antil, 24, was found deceased inside a vehicle in the area. No arrests have been made, and the investigation remains ongoing," the police said.

Chirag Antil's brother Ronit told reporters that Chirag seemed happy when they spoke on the phone in morning. Chirag later took out his Audi to go somewhere. That was when he was shot dead.

The Congress students' wing National Students' Union of India chief Varun Choudhary in a post on X tagging the Ministry of External Affairs requested for assistance to the student's family.

"Urgent attention regarding the murder of Chirag Antil, an Indian student in Vancouver, Canada. We urge the Ministry of External Affairs to closely monitor the progress of the investigation and ensure that justice is swiftly served," Mr Choudhary said.

"Additionally, we request the ministry to extend all necessary support and assistance to the family of the deceased during this difficult time," he said.

Chirag Antil's family is raising money through the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe to repatriate his body to India, local media reported.

Haryana resident Romit Antil, the brother of Chirag Antil, told CityNews that he was a kind-hearted person.

"My brother and I had a great relationship. We used to talk every day, day and night. I spoke to him last before the accident happened. He was kind of happy, he never had any issues or fights with anyone, ever. He was an extremely polite person," Romit Antil told CityNews.

Chirag Antil came to Vancouver in September 2022. He just finished MBA at University Canada West, and recently got his work permit.

Here are 5 facts about Chirag Antil

1.    Chirag Antil was a resident of Sonipat, Haryana.
2.    He was the youngest son of Mahavir Antil, a retired employee of the Sugar Mill Department of the Haryana Government.
3.    Chirag moved to Vancouver in 2022 to pursue higher studies at the University Canada West (UCW), in British Columbia.
4.    After completing his MBA, he started working at a company in Canada after getting a work permit.
5.    Chirag's brother Ronit shared in an interview that his younger sibling was a "kind-hearted" person. "I spoke to him last before the accident happened," he said and added that Chirag sounded "happy".

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