January 11, 2023

32 minutes

Available for over a year

Three London schoolgirls disappear, heading for a war zone. Four years later only one emerges from the ashes of ISIS. Nobody knows what really happened to her. Josh Baker meets Shamima Begum in Syria to begin unpicking her story.

Almost eight years earlier, he was filming in Shamima’s local mosque when news broke that she and her friends had gone missing, it made global headlines. He was there when their families came asking for help, but it was all too late; they'd already made it into the hands of the Islamic State group.

But how did it all begin?

Reporter: Josh Baker

Written by: Josh Baker and Joe Kent

Producers: Josh Baker, Sara Obeidat and Joe Kent

Composer: Firas Abou Fakher

Theme music: Sam Slater

Mix and sound design: Tom Brignell

Production coordinator: Janet Staples

Series Editor: Jonathan Aspinwall

Head of Long Form Audio: Emma Rippon

Commissioning Executive: Dylan Haskins

ARCHIVE

Good Morning Britain (ITV, September 2021)

Sky News: John Sparks interviews Shamima Begum (February 2019)