Shamima Begum and Sharmeena Begum, ISIS brides – all made up

This was written in March but I'm just posting it now.

Until the moment I started reading George and the ISIS bride (Off-Guardian, 23 Feb),  I felt no reason to disbelieve the “ISIS brides” stories I was vaguely aware of. But it suddenly occurred to me when reading Kevin Smith’s article that, like so many other stories put out by the media, the ISIS brides stories are made up. Especially where a story seems improbable or seems to have a propagandistic force behind it, it is advisable to question the story itself, before analysing the responses to it.
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The article focuses on Shamima Begum, one of four teenagers who are referred to in the media as “the Bethnal Green trio” including Shamima (aka Shahima), Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana and their friend, Sharmeena Begum (no relation). Sharmeena left for Syria to marry her Jihadi terrorist while the “trio” left two weeks later, each to marry their own Jihadi terrorist. I was most confused when I first started to study Shamima because I somehow missed the “trio plus friend” configuration and believed that Shamima and Sharmeena were one and the same person. One wonders why this configuration? Why not simply call them the “Bethnal Green quartet”?

Anomalies in news reports including interviews with Shamima
A number of anomalies can be seen in the reports and in the interviews with Shamima themselves on February 17, 18 and 21.

Posted on February 17, this indoor Sky News interview by an unnamed reporter with Shamima, face uncovered, begins with the label “Sky News has spoken to 19-year-old Shamima from East London hours after she gave birth to a boy in Northern Syria.” If the reporter is right there, why does the label says “from East London”? When asked what she named her son she says, “I named him after my own son cos that’s what my husband wanted.” “My own son” sounds strange. Wouldn’t you say, “my first son”? She later says, “Everyone was getting sick. My kids died.” Wouldn’t you also say, “My first two children died” and wouldn’t you perhaps say it with a bit more emotion and detail and wouldn’t the journalist also express some kind of surprise, as he expresses no knowledge of this fact, and condolence? When asked how she felt living under Islamic State she says, “… only at the end, after my son died I realised I had to get out for the sake of my children, for the sake of my daughter and my baby.” So at what point did her daughter die if her baby is only newly-born? It is strange that so little is said about her first two children and it is rather strange that such a young woman in difficult circumstances would have borne three children. A native English speaker, she says, “I don’t have monies.” When asked if she has been in contact with her husband she says without any emotion or logic (in the use of the contradictory words “don’t have to” and “would like to”), “I don’t have to be in contact with … I don’t know if they would let me get in contact with … I don’t know where he is right now … I would like to get in contact with him.” Similarly, with no emotion she says, “Please don’t give up trying to get me back, I really don’t want to stay here.” It was announced March 9 that her newly-born baby has also died.

In this ITV news report by Security Editor, Rohit Kachroo, posted February 18, from Eastern Syria we do not see the “sprawling camp” noted in the following Sky News report and we have to wonder how and why Shamima has moved from Northern Syria to Eastern Syria overnight when yesterday’s report indicated she’d only given birth hours before and travel around Syria is difficult under any circumstances. Where is Shamima? She’s also wearing niqab which she throws back to give the interview. No niqab in the indoor Sky News interview but niqab here thrown back for an interview? I’m not an expert on Muslim customs but I know that’s not how women who wear niqab behave – wearing it here but not there and then throwing it back for interviews. There is the same lack of emotion displayed. She’s holding some clothing in which supposedly a baby is lying but there is nothing convincing to suggest she’s really holding a baby. After the interview we are shown images of men wrapped blankets described as “leaving the so-called caliphate”. Over images of people in transit, Rohit tells us, “We saw fighters and their families, one from Serbia, another from Ukraine. What happened to the foreigners who went to ISIS is one of the most pressing issues here.” When he says the word “Serbia” we hear a voice say “Serbia” with a Serbian accent. Similarly, we hear a voice say “Ukrania” when he says Ukraine. It’s almost comical. There is nothing convincing to suggest that these people in transit are “foreign ISIS families”.

From a Sky News report published February 21 by John Sparks:
“In a sprawling camp of canvas and wire for displaced people in Syria there is a special section for the members and associates of Islamic State, a “camp of the damned” occupied by the women and children of IS fighters and there are 1500 people packed inside.”

One wonders at the process for achieving this segregation. One also wonders at John Sparks simply saying “Syria”. Normally a reporter reports the location more specifically. One speaker has a French accent and one speaker appears to be from Trinidad, suggesting they are foreign “ISIS brides” like Shamima, however, we cannot be sure that the voices of the women match the women in niqab. These voices could be any voices and the women in niqab could be saying anything. We cannot match sounds to movement of lips. In fact, there is nothing that indicates that the reporter or any of the speakers are actually at the location of the video. Similarly, Shamima is shown in niqab with just her head appearing at the zippered opening of a tent, however, we only see the tent in closeup so we cannot be certain it’s the same locale as the sprawling camp nor can we have any certainty about the woman being Shamima due to the niqab and very limited screen exposure of the woman shown to us. Sparks says that Shamima told him that the “camp” had lost her “papers” while Shamima says that she’s lost her “card”. One wonders what documents are being referred to and if she wishes to return to the UK why is there no mention of her passport, surely the most relevant document?

Anthony Loyd, the journalist who found her in the Syrian refugee camp
In the New Statesman, we are told that Anthony Loyd, Times journalist, found Shamima in a Syrian refugee camp on February 13, in al-Hawl, north-eastern Syria. For a heavily-pregnant-then-new-mother Shamima certainly moves around – north-eastern Syria, northern Syria and then eastern Syria. Considering that this find was such a coup and that Anthony, according to Wikipedia, accidentally became a war photographer during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, you do wonder at him taking no images of this historic moment.

Everything about this alleged journalist suggests he is an intelligence asset. In his article, The Man Who Shot Me Now Works For The CIA, (originally published in the Sunday Times and republished by SOTT), he says:
"It was with some surprise watching a video of a victorious band of western-backed rebels that I noticed the face of America's newest ally in the war against Isis in Syria. It was the face of a man I last saw in May 2014 when he leant forward to shoot me twice in the left ankle at almost point-blank range while my hands were tied. It was punishment for having attempted to escape his gang of kidnappers in northern Syria who had hoped to sell me on."

This can surely only be disinformation propaganda attempting to promote the laughable notion that the British do not collude with the US in their nefarious activities in Syria. His battered face could easily be produced by moulage rather than reflect a real assault and I find this interview with Christiane Amanpour where he describes being shot simply not credible. Of course, that might be because its purpose was to be used in the equally incredible “The Man Who Shot Me Now Works for the CIA” article.

The teddy bear
While this article is focused on Shamima I find the photo of Sharmeena’s family members and father of Amira Abase in this Daily Mail article, How jihadi bride's family sought help from hardline Isis apologists Cage...not police worth commenting on.

The photo seems very much a staged tableau with possible photoshopping as the positioning, sizing and gaze of the figures seem slightly off and we do have to wonder about Mr Abase holding a teddy bear dressed in blue and white and Sharmeena’s sister holding a red blanket with white writing.

At this point I ask the reader to consider a claim that may seem very counterintuitive and hard to believe but that is supported by the density of anomalies in the rather brief media snippets discussed in this article. Analyst, Ole Dammegard, has said that an insider informed him that the power elite justify their hoaxing of us by the fact that through showing us stuff that is really not believable at all and sheer sloppiness they are, in fact, telling us what they're up to and if we don't figure it out and call them out for it, the fault lies with us, not them which spares them from karmic repercussions. The insider emphasised to Ole that the power elite takes this signalling very seriously. Examples include: discrepancy between what is told and what is shown, different spellings of names, things that don’t add up, contradictions, strange changes in and different versions of the story, ridiculousness, sheer impossibility, inappropriate display of emotion or lack of emotion, etc. They also use Masonic coding in colours, numbers and symbols. If we google Masonic teddy bear this is what we get.

If it is true that signs are made in these fabrications we might also infer that as a number of agency staff and others are required to collaborate in these fabrications the fact of signalling may be used to persuade the collaborators that their participation is less criminal than it might seem.

While I find great resistance to the idea of this phenomenon, I have to say that in my own case I didn’t have a second’s doubt about the claim despite its seeming counterintuitiveness. Rather, it came as a welcome relief to find an explanation for a number of things that had very much puzzled me including: Robbie Parker’s infamous broad grin as he walks to the microphone to talk about his six year-old-daughter murdered the day before; the chipper and excited mood of Mark Walsh interviewed only a couple of hours after the tower collapses on 9/11 where he describes witnessing the impossible act of the second plane “ream[ing] right through the other side”; Larry Silverstein’s infamous “pull it”; the terrorists popping up alive; Hani Hanjour’s flight instructor describing little Hani, the alleged executor of the masterful 330 degree swoop into the Pentagon, as a crybaby and a number of other inexplicable anomalies.
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Regardless of deliberate signs or not, there are a number of things seriously wrong with this story and there are a number of things wrong with the connected stories. What we have is a tissue of lies into which are woven many false threads. It is scary to think how this tissue of lies is being used and will be used in the future.