Supreme Court refuses to hear appeal of 'remorseful' ISIS bride who traveled from Alabama to Syria where she married THREE jihadis, had a child, and called for Memorial Day terror attacks - before begging to return to US
- Hoda Muthana, 25, who left the US to join ISIS in Syria in 2014, has been legally fighting to return to her to the US — her country of birth
- However, the US Supreme Court has now refused to hear an appeal she filed for to return to her family's home in Alabama with her toddler son
- While she was overseas, the Obama administration determined she was not a U.S. citizen and revoked her passport, citing her father's diplomatic status
- The Supreme Court argued that children of diplomats aren't entitled to birthright citizenship, and Muthana's parents were diplomats from Yemen
- The family's lawyers appealed, stating that her father's diplomat status to the U.N. had ended before her birth, making her automatically a citizen
- A federal judge previously ruled that the Obama administration was within its rights to rescind Muthana's passport
Supreme Court justices have refused to hear the appeal of a US-born ISIS bride who was stripped of her passport after traveling to Syria, marrying three jihadis and calling for Memorial Day terror attacks.
The justices declined without comment on Monday to consider the appeal of Hoda Muthana, 27, who was born in New Jersey in October 1994 to a diplomat from Yemen and grew up in Alabama near Birmingham. She claims to be remorseful, and has begged to be allowed back into the US.
Muthana left the U.S. to join the Islamic State in 2014, apparently after becoming radicalized online.
While she was overseas the government determined she was not a U.S. citizen and revoked her passport, citing her father's status as a Yemeni diplomat at the time of her birth. Her family sued to enable her return to the United States.
A federal judge previously ruled in 2019 that the U.S. government correctly determined Muthana wasn't a U.S. citizen despite her birth in the country. Children of diplomats aren't entitled to birthright citizenship. The family´s lawyers appealed, arguing that her father's status as a diplomat assigned to the U.N. had ended before her birth, making her automatically a citizen.
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal of Hoda Muthana, 27, who left her family's home in Alabama to join the Islamic State terror group, but then decided she wanted to return to the United States. Muthana, who was born in New Jersey in 1994 and grew up in Alabama.
This photo of female jihadis waving the ISIS flag was found on a now-deactivated Twitter account which reportedly belonged to Muthana
The United States Supreme Court rejected Muthana's appeal on Monday, not making any comments on why they declined it
Muthana surrendered to U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces as Islamic State fighters were losing the last of their self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria and going to refugee camps.
Since then Muthana has said that she has regretted her decision to join the group, when she left the US at 19-years-old and headed to Raqqa in Syria via Turkey, where she would first marry an Australian jihadist and then a Tunisian man.
Both died fighting for ISIS, and she secretly married a Syrian, The Guardian reveals.
During her time as a jihadi bride in ISIS's then-capital Raqqa in Syria, Muthana would use social media as a tactic to spread hatred against non-Muslims and call for terror attacks in the US.
In a 2015 tweet, she celebrated the burning of her U.S. passport online and made posts with statements like 'Spill all (the Americans') blood.'
'Go on drive-bys and spill all of their blood, or rent a big truck and drive all over them. Veterans, Patriot, Memorial etc Day parades..go on drive by's + spill all of their blood or rent a big truck n drive all over them. Kill them.'
However, the young mother-of-one now wants to return to her country of birth with her child, Adam, who muis the son of Muthana's second husband.
Muthana is pictured with her son, Adam, who is believed to be around two-years-old, in an undated picture
In a picture from 2019, Muthana holds her 18-month-old son Adam in-front of one of the administration buildings of the al-Hawl IDP camp where ISIS suspected families, who fled heavy fighting in the city of Baghuz are kept
Muthana was born to Yemeni diplomats in New Jersey in 1994 and grew up in her family's home in Hoover, Alabama (pictured), until 2014 when she left for Syria, after being radicalized online
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For now, she is believed to be in the tent-city that is al-Hol - also known as al-Hawl - a refugee camp in northern Syria some 200 miles away from ISIS's 'last front' near the village of Baghouz by the Iraqi border.
Speaking to The Guardian in 2019, the ex-jihadi claims she 'deeply regrets' leaving the US, and that she believed she was doing what was right according to Islam.
'I thought I was doing things correctly for the sake of God,' adding that she now believes she 'misunderstood' her faith.
'I was really young and ignorant and I was 19 when I decided to leave.'
At the time when she left, her family pleaded with her to come home and in an interview with BuzzFeed, her father said she had been 'brainwashed'.
The 24-year-old former University of Alabama student says she is worried about her son's future, and begged the US and her family for forgiveness at the time.
'I believe that America gives second chances. I want to return and I'll never come back to the Middle East. America can take my passport and I wouldn't mind.'
The decision to revoke her passport was made under former President Barack Obama. The case gained widespread attention as former President Donald Trump tweeted about it, saying he had directed the secretary of state not to allow her back into the country.
Like Muthana, Shemima Begum, 22, is pleading with UK authorities to let her return to her home country as she fears for her son's future, but was denied
Another western ISIS bride living in the camp is 19-year-old Shamima Begum, who was just 15 when she and two classmates Kadiza Sultana and Amira Abase travelled from London's Bethnal Green to Syria in February 2015.
Begum, like Muthana, is pleading with authorities to be allowed to return to her home country as she fears for the future of her son. However, like the US, the UK has denied her entry and stripped her from her citizenship in 2019.
Begum was born in the UK, but government ministers there decreed that she was also eligible for Bangladeshi citizenship, and revoked her British passport on that basis.
Shamima Begum: The UK's most notorious teenage ISIS bride
Hoda Muthana's plea to the Supreme Court mirrors the experience of British ISIS bride Shamima Begun, who fled to join the so-called Caliphate in 2015, when she was just 15 years-old.
In 2019, she was discovered in a Syrian refugee camp, and appealed to the public for forgiveness, while even offering to help the government fight terrorism if she is allowed to return home.
But the British-born extremist's pleas fell on deaf ears, with the UK government stripping Begum of her citizenship. Ministers said that because she also qualified for Bangladeshi citizenship through her parents, canceling her British passport did not render her stateless.
Begum, along with two of her school friends, Kadiza Sultana and Amira Abase, boarded a flight from London's Gatwick Airport to Turkey seven years ago — where they then traveled to the Syrian border. Less than two weeks after arriving in the country, Begum married a man who was later convicted of terrorism offenses.
Sultana and Abase both died in allied bombing raids.
In her latest interview, Begum asked the public to forgive her decision, saying that when she left British soil to join the Islamic State, she believed she was 'doing the right thing as a Muslim.'
Speaking from a detention camp in Syria, she said she did not realize that the group was a 'death cult,' and that it had never been her intention to hurt anyone.
In 2019, Begum, who was born in Britain, was stripped of her citizenship by the government — sparking global debate over whether countries should take back foreign fighters who many argue pose a significant risk to national security.
'I tell you from the bottom of my heart that I regret every, every decision I've made since I stepped into Syria, and I will live with it for the rest of my life,' she said, adding that she would rather be killed than rejoin the terrorist group.
In a 2019 interview with Sky News, she had said she had no regrets about joining the extremist organization.
Begum maintained on Wednesday that she did not carry out any crimes and that her decision was poorly judged because of her age at the time. She argued that if the authorities truly believed she was guilty, she should be allowed to return to Britain to face trial.
The schoolgirl fled London in February 2015 as a 15-year-old, travelling to Syria with two friends, Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana, to become a jihadi bride - but now claims she no longer supports ISIS and wants to return to the UK
She went on to say that she believed she could help Britain fight terrorism if allowed to return.
'I want to help,' she said. 'You clearly don't know what you're doing.'
In the years since she left London, Begum has often shown little remorse for her actions — once saying that there was 'fair justification' for the Manchester Arena suicide bombing, in response to coalition airstrikes that killed Syrians.
The 2017 attack, which was carried out at an Ariana Grande concert in England, killed 22 people and injured over 116 — many of whom were young women.
Sajid Javid, who was Britain's home secretary at the time Begum's citizenship was revoked, said Wednesday that the government stood by its decision and that the safety of citizens remained its priority, the BBC reported.
Under British law, the home secretary can revoke citizenship if it is 'conducive to the public good' and if it does not make a person stateless. The government has argued that Begum is eligible for Bangladeshi citizenship.
However, while Begum has Bangladeshi roots, the Bangladeshi Foreign Ministry said in a 2019 statement that she was not a Bangladeshi citizen and had never visited the country.
'There is no question of her being allowed to enter into Bangladesh,' the statement said.
Since moving to Syria, Begum has given birth to three children — all of whom have died in childhood.
