Tareena Shakil

Tareena Shakil
A glamourous Tareena Shakil, after her deradicalization, via BBC
Born	1989 (age 34–35) Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, UK
Nationality	UK
Other names	Tareena al Amirah
Occupation	health care worker
Known for	travelled to Daesh-occupied Syria

According to The Intercept this image of Shakil, published in The Sun, on October 14, 2014, was widely republished, making her the first Bride of ISIS to be well-known.

Tareena Shakil is an United Kingdom citizen, who travelled to Daesh-occupied Syria, and then denounced the Daesh ideology. She is the first UK bride of ISIS to be convicted for her association with Daesh.

A one-hour documentary about Shakil, entitled, “Tareena: Return from ISIS,” premiered in November 2021. The film was made shortly after her parole expired. Her parole barred her from talking to journalists.

Shakil describes being covertly encouraged to travel to Syria, and now describes herself as being duped. She took her young son with her when she travelled to Syria, in 2014. She was then confined to a barracks with other women, waiting to be picked as the wife of a Daesh fighter. She found the barracks confinement disillusioning. She described two other young women, who didn't fit in, "disappearing". After some months of confinement she was able to escape, and travel back to the United Kingdom.

UK authorities confined her, upon her return. UK authorities, citing social media posts she made, charged her with "supporting terrorism". She was the first UK woman to be convicted for her travels to Syria.

Russell Dennison, an American convert to Islam who became a Daesh fighter, had maintained a clandestine correspondence with American journalist Trevor Aaronson. From that correspondence Dennison had described a brief marriage to Shakil, but Shakil didn't acknowledge that marriage until she spoke about it in a documentary that premiered in November, 2021. Aaronson said his marriage to his first UK wife was one of the few topics Dennison was willing to speak of, in detail. Aaronson did quote what Dennison would say about her:

“This girl, she just rushed into coming to Syria. When she came, she missed her mother, and she wanted to go back to Britain. And you know, some of these sisters, they do that — they talk to men online. They get excited. They see these Islamic State videos, and they just leave everything, and then they come, they see there’s bombings, there’s killing, there’s war, and they can never go back. So this woman ended up returning back to Britain. There’s nothing else really to say about her.”