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John and I met online when we were 19.
He was American, from an upper middle class family in Texas.
I saw him as my ticket out.
We had big dreams, to have lots of babies.
âRFOREIGN DIALOGUEÁ.
Yes.
Very good.
Yeah.
- Yeah. - Good job.
I really wanted my children to be the best and the brightest.
I'm not going to let dummies take over the world.
âRCHATTERINGÁ.
I had been taught America is the enemy.
But once I was in America, I didn't want to leave.
John was never going to let us stay in America.
My name is Tania Joya
and I was married to the highest ranking American in ISIS.
This is my story.
I was born in 1983, north-west of London.
But my parents are Bangladeshi origin.
Growing up in the UK,
there was a conflict of identity.
I couldn't identify as being Bangladeshi,
I don't have a Bangladeshi passport, I barely speak the language.
I understand I'm ethnically Bengali but, even as a child,
I had a lot of snobbery against my own culture.
If anybody asked me what I wanted to be, I would say,
"I want to grow up to be an Englishwoman.
They're so fair and beautiful and free
and they can wear what they like and..."
I know that, as a Bengali Muslim girl, that's out of the question.
I wasn't raised as an extremist.
Religion was just a way of controlling the girls in particular,
so that we wouldn't be too westernized.
In my family, western values were seen as being haram,
which means forbidden.
I wanted to be a dancer when I was young.
I really liked boys to men and âRLAUGHSÁ I was crazy about Madonna.
I would always, like, perform for my family, going "Like a virgin".
All the time, they'd all giggle and laugh
and I didn't know what I was saying.
Being the youngest of four girls,
I needed to be the center of attention,
otherwise I'd get forgotten.
But once I became a radical, I threw that all away.
My family lived in Harrow.
My Mom would always do catering work,
and my Dad, he had a lot of problems keeping a job.
In my neighbourhood, I experienced racism every day.
âRRALLY IN PROCESSIONÁ
In the 80s and 90s,
there were these clashes between the skinheads and Asian groups.
In the East End of London,
the openly racist British National Party take to the streets.
The number of racial attacks has doubled in a year.
There have been 1500 cases of harassment and assault
directed mostly at Asians.
Our neighbours would smash our windows.
They would always have German Shepherd dogs that would attack us.
They would poop on my parents' car.
They treated us like we were so alien.
My parents would have to call the police,
but we knew that they weren't going to help us.
I developed a fear of leaving my house.
When we were in High School,
my family and I moved to East London.
It was a working class community and people were far more religious.
They were a lot less westernized than I was.
If I was wearing jeans, or heels, or makeup,
just being feminine, I would be *** shamed.
Boys just started spreading horrible rumors about me,
so I didn't have any friends.
I became so depressed and isolated,
I was willing just to do anything to make my life better.
September 2001,
I come home from school and I switch on the news
and I see the images of the planes flying into the twin towers.
The United States has been hit by what's been described
as the worst act of terrorism the world has ever seen.
The plane has crashed into the World Trade Center.
We have no idea
how many were on board
or what the extent of the injuries are right now.
Oh, there's another one. Another plane just hit.
But I-- Oh my God!
Another plane has just hit. Explosion.
And we were shocked and we was, like, just flabbergasted by it.
Horrified.
They started reporting that it was by somebody called Osama Bin Laden
who I'd never heard of before.
People with links to the Osama Bin Laden organization
are responsible for today's attacks.
And the terrorists are trying to send a message.
They have attacked the most prominent
landmark of American capitalism.
We may be weeping over the people who are dying,
and in parts of the world they're celebrating America's
been given a taste of its own medicine as they see it.
The next day,
in my politics class I was sitting next to a girl
who I really looked up to and I said,
"Wasn't it terrible what happened on the news and
the--, the twin towers were attacked" and she said,
"Is it so terrible? Is it so bad?"
And I was shocked. I was, like,
"Oh, maybe she couldn't hear me." So I said, "Wasn't it horrible?"
And she said, "Oh, you don't understand.
Just come home to my house after school
and my Mom will explain to you why it,
it's not so bad."
I went to her house after school,
and her Mom told me who Osama Bin Laden was.
He was a warrior.
He was the Robin Hood of the Muslim community.
He threw away a life of luxury to be on the front lines.
It was like a fairytale story.
I was just taken with it.
I was, like, "Oh, I love this man.
He's a hero."
âRFOREIGN DIALOGUEÁ.
They explained to me about jihad.
In a jihad, it's when you're fighting conflict in your mind.
Outward jihad is holy war.
Osama Bin Laden was telling us it's an obligation on every Muslim,
when they're being attacked, to fight back.
âRFOREIGN DIALOGUEÁ.
As a 17, 18-year-old, hearing all this,
it seemed very appealing.
I was feeding into we're the victims,
and I already knew that and felt that.
I remember hearing President Bush speaking about a crusade.
This crusade...
....this war on terrorism,
it is time for us to win
the first war of the twenty-first century decisively.
That word crusade
only confirmed our beliefs that it's a war against Islam.
Slowly I stopped dressing as western and
I started wearing more cultural clothes.
Eventually, it was the hijab
and wearing the jilbab which is the robes
and I went into school wearing a niqab.
One of the boys called out to me to say,
"Hey, you're Osama Bin Laden's wife"
and I turned around and said, "I wish."
I wanted to prove to the Muslims at my school that I was a new person.
I'm no longer that flirtatious, fun, colourful Tania.
I am a holy righteous woman who believes in Mohamed and God.
It felt like I was invisible, and I wanted to be invisible.
I didn't want to be Tania anymore.
Nobody knew or understood what was going on with my psychologically.
I didn't have anyone to explain, you know, you're being indoctrinated.
My radicalization absolutely was a big FU to the UK,
because of the rejection that I had felt my whole life growing up.
I was really intrigued by the idea of Muslim power,
because growing up I felt very powerless and
I was a bit hungry for power.
My parents were not happy at all.
I remember my Mom saying,
"Oh, you're throwing away all your ambition."
I was, like, "What are you talking about?
I have got lot of ambition. I want to take over the world.
Don't tell me that's not ambitious."
My Dad used to yell at me.
He was, like, "I'm going to throw you out."
I was, like, "Don't. You don't have to, I'm going to leave, you know,
I'm just...I'm working on it."
I didn't get along with my Dad at all,
I actually hated him a lot.
And I didn't like my Mom because she always
covered the wrong doings that my Dad did.
I was really just so desperate to leave my life.
In my family's culture, girls don't leave home unless they're married.
I didn't really feel ready to get married,
but it was the only way out for me.
I wasn't going to allow my parents to arrange a marriage for me.
I always said no way. I will pick myself.
At school, we would exchange magazines and material on Islam.
We used to get a lot of information about the abuses
that the American military would commit.
Raping women in Iraq,
Abu Ghraib.
The American military were humiliating the Muslim population.
It made me angry. It made everybody angry.
One of the magazines was talking about John Walker Lind.
John Walker Lind.
He went to the Middle East to study Islam but joined the Taliban.
John Walker Lind will be charged with conspiracy to kill Americans.
My friends and I liked John Walker Lind because
he was an American convert.
He fascinated us that he would
leave somewhere like American to be part of our world.
To us he was just a hero and it was, like,
"Oh, wow, if only I could have someone like him to marry.
âRPEOPLE SHOUTING IN RALLYÁ
In 2002, I was at a rally in London.
Some Muslim men were giving out fliers,
and on the fliers was the website Muslim Matrimony.
It's not even Muslim dating.
You go there to look for somebody to marry.
So I went online.
I was curious to see what I would find.
There were Muslim men from all over the world.
I wrote that I am a devout Sunni Muslim looking to travel.
That I like cooking. I'm very domesticated.
Want to have lots of babies.
I'm looking for a very pious Muslim husband.
Was very simple.
I didn't put a picture of myself.
Images in Islam, a lot of people think it's forbidden.
And bang, you get 600 messages.
A man named Yahya found me.
Yahya is the Arabic equivalent of John.
He was a white upper middle class American.
He was in Syria at the time, studying Arabic and Damascus.
He was the same age as me, 19.
And he kept pestering me.
He kept messaging me and I was, like, no,
I'm really looking for someone more experienced with life
and you're just a bit too young
and I don't really understand how and why an American
from a upper middle class family is in Damascus.
But I was also very intrigued.
After September 11, I watched a lot of Al-Qaeda propaganda.
Tough warrior men fighting a holy war,
and taking care of women and protecting them.
I totally fell for it,
thinking I'm just going to get married and
travel to the Middle East and live an adventure.
I thought it would be very romantic, like Aladdin. âRCHUCKLESÁ
I saw Yahya as my ticket out.
In 2014, I was investigating anyone I could find
who was important in the ecosystem of ISIS.
I met a very influential figure online in Australia.
Musa Cerantonio.
Musa was part of a certain sect of English-speaking jihadists
who were loyal to ISIS.
And he said, "I have a teacher, his name's Yahya".
And Musa suggested that Yahya
was part of the leadership structures of ISIS itself.
Musa then told me that Yahya was American.
That seemed like something that I should be investigating.
Yahya had a lot of pseudonyms,
and there were little breadcrumbs that he left in those names.
If you call yourself Abu Hassan,
that suggests they have a son named Hassan.
If you call yourself Yahya al-Bahrumi,
that name Bahrumi
suggests that you have something to do with Mediterranean.
He chose names that were just idiosyncratic enough
that if there was someone who really wanted to dig in there,
they might be able to find him
and that person turned out to be me.
Yahya was an American named John Georgelas.
When I learned about John Georgelas,
I showed up at his last known address in America
which was his parents' home in Dallas, Texas.
Nice houses inhabited by doctors, low crime area.
But when I found out that John lived in this pleasantly boring place,
I was shocked.
John's father came out and he spoke to me briefly.
It was with exactly the kind of sadness
that you'd expect from a father who has, in effect, lost a son.
He said that his son had gone down the wrong path
over and over in his life.
The family had rescued him
with money, with housing, with support.
They had given him every chance
to get on a better path and he chose the wrong one.
John came from a family that was extremely prosperous.
His grandfather was a war hero in the US Army,
and his father had served in the Air Force as a physician.
These are real patriots.
When John decides to rebel,
he found outlets that were as diametrically opposed
to his family's patriotism as he could find.
By the time he went off to college in 2001,
the 911 attacks would happen.
John decided to go into a mosque and convert to Islam.
I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you.
And the people who knocked these buildings down
will hear all of us soon.
âRCHEERING AND APPLAUSINGÁ.
In the days after 911,
you had this moment of binarism
where you could be on the side of America
or you could be on the side of Osama Bin Laden.
For someone like John,
converting to Islam is a really potent way to rebel.
So he sells his truck
and moves to Damascus, to study classical Arabic.
While in Syria,
he slid deeper and deeper into
a really extreme form of global jihadism.
âRFOREIGN LANGUAGEÁ
The pathway to radicalization is certainly not unique to Islam.
It often starts with an individual who's vulnerable,
lost and looking for answers,
and if the right group comes along with the right story,
they can usually win that person over.
The Al-Qaeda narrative of
unfair discrimination against the Muslim community, the Omah,
was felt very, very strongly.
They portrayed themselves as communities under attack.
âRFOREIGN DIALOGUEÁ.
The notion of jihad
i--, is a very contested notion that,
by the way, does not necessarily mean fighting.
For most Muslims, the idea of the greater Jihad
is actually supposed to be your
own personal struggle to be a better person.
The lesser jihad is to take up arms in defense if you are under attack.
A lot of followers and supporters of Al-Qaeda
comfortably describe themselves as jihadists
because they saw themselves as defending their community.
The religious text just gives them some kind of veneer of validity
but groups like Al-Qaeda
are not so much about religion as they are about power.
John and I would email quite often.
He would say to me, my weapon is not
the sword. My weapon's the keyboard.
He told me that he's very good at coding with computers and hacking.
On the Muslim Matrimony website, you can't say words like jihad,
but we would go around it
so it was very clear that our values were the same.
Jihad, children, dying, heaven.
I thought he was going to be the key to heaven for me,
because he was so devout.
But he wasn't just this rigid conservative guy.
He was funny and charming.
And, you know, his photos, he was cute, he was very handsome.
What I really liked about John was that he was a convert.
Cat Stevens had converted to Islam, so we all looked up to him.
We loved his music and we all wanted to marry a Cat Stevens.
âRLAUGHSÁ And John was the closest thing I could get to a Cat Stevens
and I wanted to show my friends that I could get that.
John and I only spoke online for about three months.
I hadn't even spoken to him on the phone.
He agreed to come to the UK to meet my family.
He came to dinner at my uncle's house.
When I saw John, I was not happy.
He looked really rough.
He had his linen pants and his loose shirt.
His running shoes were terrible.
It wasn't the nice pictured he'd shown me in a email
where he looked all polished.
I was all dressed up in my, like,
fancy hijab and jilbab
that my grandmother had bought me from Dubai.
Of course, John didn't like that.
He wanted me to look like a good pious wife.
I made this really nice dessert and it had walnuts in it and he said,
"Oh, I don't eat food with nuts in it"
and I was, like, "Well I don't like fussy eaters,
and I made this for you so you're going to eat it."
I remember telling my aunt, "I don't like him."
But they accepted John because he was
a white upper middle class American.
His Dad was a doctor and my Mom thought,
"Ah, well, she gets into trouble, they'll take care of her."
So I just kept my mouth shut.
Three days after we met, we did our religious ceremony.
We did it very quietly.
My Uncle had appointed an Imam to be my chaperon.
The other relatives who were supposed to show up as witnesses
didn't attend,
and John, none of his family would come
because they were unhappy with him being a Muslim
and unhappy with him getting married at such a young age.
I, I was just sobbing my eyes out.
John was a stranger and one that I'm not very attracted to.
But, you know, for centuries, women from my culture had to do this.
They married men that other people chose and it worked out.
I was taught by my Mom falling in love was dangerous.
Love comes after marriage,
and it takes years so I just figured this is how
the world has always been up until
a hundred years ago when romance became a factor. âRCHUCKLESÁ
Then John stepped on my foot on purpose.
I was..."What are you doing?"
And then he was like, "That's what we do in Greek marriages.
The man steps on the woman's foot to say he's in charge."
That was my wedding day.
After the wedding, John and I moved to Texas.
We lived in an apartment in North Dallas,
and we went to visit John's parents in Plano
and I was just, my jaw dropped.
This is the life.
I was, like, I have never even seen a place so beautiful like this.
John's parents had a big swimming pool.
I didn't know how to swim.
So John taught me how to swim,
and that was really cute and he was a great swimmer.
That was the first time I saw his playful side.
I thought it was adorable.
He would always go skateboarding and it was cute to see him do that.
I loved his American side.
That's where I became attached to him.
John's parents, Tim and Martha, were Greek Orthodox Christian.
John's Mom was always, like, nice and loving.
She was more loving than my own mother was.
John's Dad, he was really well accomplished.
John always felt like he was frowned on by his father.
He wasn't tall enough.
He wasn't athletic enough, you know, he wasn't his Dad.
They never wanted to discuss religion with us.
If religion was spoken about, it would cause an argument.
John and I were very much stuck in an extremist mindset.
We were very, very isolated.
We didn't go to mosques 'cause we believed mosques are full of spies.
I stayed most of the time at home.
I wasn't allowed to watch TV.
I always wore fashionable clothes underneath my robes,
but John insisted no more heels.
John put a lot of pressure on me to change my name from Tania.
He said you have to take an Arabic Muslim name.
So I went by the name Yahya.
When I got married to John, he was now in charge of me.
If I disobeyed him, I was disobeying God
because the scripture says
obey those in authority over you
and we believed only men that are in authority.
John became my demi-god.
But John and I had big dreams.
Let's have seven sons, one to take over each continent.
We both believed to live your life in the path of Allah
means raising militant kids.
So I got pregnant.
My first son, Michael, was born on my 21st birthday.
I loved, I loved that he was born on my birthday.
I was always encouraging him
that you're going to grow up and be a soldier for God.
You're going to be a warrior.
At the time, I thought we were only doing good for the world.
So how do you reconcile living in the United States,
but also hating America and supporting killing Americans?
As extremist Muslims, you can't live in any country that's considered,
like, Dar al-Harb, a land of war
unless you have some per--, like a real legitimate reason,
like either you're stuck there or you're working
to ha--, get the means to get out.
Or, the third is to attack.
So John and I, we came to America
so that he could earn money so that we could go back to Syria.
John got a job at Rack Space.
They web posted websites for Fortune 500 companies.
At the same time, John was talking on a website called Jihad Unspun.
This website had all Al-Qaeda propaganda.
They were selling videos by Osama Bin Laden,
and John was fascinated and he loved this website
and he reached out and he said,
"If I can help you with any technical work, or any coding,
I'm happy to do that."
John's friends and I were saying don't trust it.
Like you can't have a website promoting Mujahideen
and Jihad and think that it's a legitimate website.
I kept, like, having
the visions and dreams that he's going to go to prison,
and he just thought I was just being silly and worried for no reason.
April 2006, we were called to pray.
âRFOREIGN LANGUAGEÁ
John showed me this video.
It's a song called âRSPECIALIST TERMINOLOGYÁ.
It's a really beautiful song about the strangers.
It's a line using Islamic scripture saying that
the believers will come in this world and live as strangers.
You know, basically, alienated and blessed are the strangers.
Right after listening to that song,
that's when the knock on the door came.
âRDOOR KNOCKINGÁ
They said, "Open the door. It's FBI.
Put your hands up."
The FBI Agents separated us.
They went through all our stuff and made a big mess,
you know, trying to look for evidence that could incriminate him.
He was arrested.
He said, "I'll be home after the weekend."
John was arrested for illegally accessing and damaging an account
controlled by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
A pro-Israel lobbying organization.
John is eventually sentenced to 34 months
in a federal prison in Seagoville, Texas.
He spent a lot of it with a small group of Muslim prisoners
and with Islamic texts.
These weren't necessarily jihadist texts,
but they were the classical sources of Islam.
There's a tendency to assume
that jihadists are not really intellectual types.
You know, they're interested in
really counter-intellectual things like cutting off people's heads,
shooting guns into the sky.
But his pursuits were deeply intellectual.
This is a guy who had immersed himself in Islam,
who had learned classical Arabic.
He was thinking back into the Muslim past and finding
what the deep obligations are of Muslims in the present.
In principle, among those obligations,
was creating a Muslim state, the Caliphate.
The Caliphate is kind of the reconstitution
of the Muslim community
as a political and religious entity.
For supporters of Al-Qaeda,
the idea that a Caliphate might come was a certainty,
but they thought it would be hundreds of years,
maybe thousands of years.
Muslims like John thought
the highest expression of the religion would be to revive
the Caliphate now.
Not tomorrow.
Not a year from now,
not when most Muslims are on board with it, but right now.
While John was in prison,
I was living in an apartment that his parents were paying for.
John was trying to make me go to Nigeria
to be with other Islamists and he was saying that I have to.
That was actually the very first time in our marriage that I said no.
No, way.
Having space from John gave me room to grow.
I got to have my television, my large screen television.
I got to watch PBS.
I got to watch things that he wanted to keep from me.
I was able to spend more time outside,
and I saw how friendly people were.
I'd be covered and I was miserable being covered
and some girl in, like, short shorts is jogging, saying hi to us.
I'm, like, "What the--? She just said hi.
That's crazy."
And then...but everybody was saying hi.
M..., my heart melted.
I started wearing my regular clothes outside.
It was something I felt I had to do
because I did not like people viewing me as a threat,
'cause I liked them. I wanted my neighbours to say hello.
I wanted to say hello to them without
them thinking negatively of me.
I would have taken off my hijab but
that was pushing it too far for John. âRLAUGHSÁ
I would say those were the best three years of my marriage
out of the ten years that we were together 'cause
it's where I was able to grow and,
you know, put my foot down and I, I started thinking for myself.
Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world
that the United States has conducted an operation that killed
Osama Bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda.
Spontaneous, patriotic celebration
at the death of public enemy number one outside the White House.
The United States has the body of Osama Bin Laden,
the mastermind of 911, the architect of Al-Qaeda.
Just think of what this means.
In May of 2011, Osama Bin Laden is killed.
You hear about it. Tell me what the reaction is.
Well I cried the whole day.
I was very, very sad and I was angry. âRSIGHSÁ.
And, like...I wasn't upset that he was dead,
I was more upset with the lies.
He got killed o--, on land,
but they took him out on a ship.
I don't know.
Maybe I'm d--, everyone's going to be made at me but...
could have some level of respect for the dead.
He wasn't like some common person, you know?
It just...they could, the least they could have done is
given his body back to his family
and they always say the stupid, the same thing about when s--,
one of these leaders, jihadists, die.
"Oh, they squealed like little girls
and hid behind their wives and children."
That's all bull---. These guys are not cowards.
They face death every single day for 20 something years.
Go in and out of prisons being tortured,
still care about their cause,
and they're going to hid behind a woman and their children?
No they're not. They're not.
Even suicide bombers, it's not a cowardly act.
âRCHUCKLESÁ It takes courage to kill yourself,
but it takes courage also to fight a war.
Let me ask you something because i--, I can sense---
When I'm going to my Muslim life,
when you, when you ask me about how I felt back then,
I can only tell you what Nija thought,
and, but m--, me now isn't, I just, like...
it's a different, it's like two different people,
you know, because I'm not the same.
A person's belief system changes and that person is, is a new version.
In ten years, who knows what version I'm going to be then.
It's not a bad thing, I think it's kind of good.
âRSIGHSÁ. I'm growing.
When John came out of prison,
John was always saying as soon as I come off probation,
we're leaving straightaway.
I didn't want to leave.
I was pregnant with my third son.
I was just so comfortable in my home
and I just wanted, like, a nest for my babies.
I didn't want to disrupt my kids' lives
but I depended on him to look after me, and I couldn't go get a job.
I didn't even graduate from High School.
And whether I agree with him or not, I had to obey him.
And Egypt was the ideal place for John to go.
âRPEOPLE SHOUTING AND CHANTINGÁ.
The Arab Spring Protests
have now led to the downfall of dictators in Tunisia,
Egypt and Libya.
In just a few months,
so much has changed with new parties,
newspapers and the liberating force of social media,
that the old Arab world can't be reinvented.
Egypt in 2011 was a very different place.
The Arab Spring had happened and John thought that Egypt
was the place where Islamists could come together
and plot to figure out a way to implement an Islamic state.
There was no government in Egypt for over a year.
It gave us a lot of freedom to just say whatever we believed online.
John had a blog.
On John's blog he translated every bit of information
from every scholar he could get his hands on
about the requirements to establish a Caliphate.
This drew attention from all different types of Muslims who
were also seeking and wondering why we don't have a state.
It wasn't as if everybody just immediately understood
what a Caliphate was,
and John thought his role was to educate people
about this obligation that,
once a Caliphate exists, then you have to go to it.
You have to pledge your loyalty to it.
More and more of his essay were describing
very specific obligations of violence in defense of Islam.
And it reflected the view of ISIS.
When the Islamic State developed in Iraq in the mid-2000s,
it was a movement that had decided as a matter of doctrine
that it would be as violent, as intolerant as possible.
To ISIS, savagery wasn't a means to an end, it was the end.
The Islamic State was more violent, more aggressive,
more vocal with its ambitions and what it wanted to do,
which was to actually rule territory.
Al-Qaeda as a below ground military organization was cellular.
You have a small Al-Qaeda group here, small Al-Qaeda group there.
ISIS was a mass movement.
It is we need all Muslims to come together.
All to come to a particular patch of land.
They didn't want to be a secretive Delta Force in caves,
they wanted a come one, come all approach to building a state.
During the time when John and Tania were in Egypt,
ISIS hadn't yet said we are the Caliphate.
It was still trying to expand its territory.
But it seemed more and more like the thing that John specifically
was longing for in telling his followers
to look for so that they can support it when it arrived.
Okay, read to Mommy.
People have many questions about Mars.
I didn't get to talk online much.
My hands were full with cooking, and cleaning, and babies, and
home-schooling.
At this time, John and I had three young children, all boys.
Very good.
- Yeah! - Yay.
Get him to sit closer to you.
What's this then?
âRFOREIGN DIALOGUEÁ.
Yay.
When we first got to Egypt,
we lived in a condo and it was really hoity-toity.
We couldn't actually afford it but we tried.
I love home decorating.
I had lanterns that were handmade in Arabic script.
I had a couch that was custom made.
I had put so much effort into building my home to be beautiful.
John's occupation and how we paid the bills was
he was a translator for the Government of Qatar.
He was also teaching at an American private school,
but I couldn't put my kids in school there because
private schools are very expensive.
So I had to home school.
That was also my way of preventing them from
mixing with non-Muslim kids.
John and I were very afraid of what our kids
would pick up and learn from them.
Where is the colour âRFOREIGN DIALOGUEÁ?
- Uh, âRFOREIGN DIALOGUEÁ. - Where's âRFOREIGN DIALOGUEÁ?
- There. - âRFOREIGN DIALOGUEÁ. Good boy.
Where is âRFOREIGN DIALOGUEÁ?
Uh, there.
I really wanted my children to be the best and the brightest.
Uh...there. There.
Yes.
I was like, okay, we got a lot of competition.
We got the Chinese, and we got Americans.
You gotta outsmart our enemies.
So I put a strong emphasis on them learning to read.
- Read this word. - âRFOREIGN DIALOGUEÁ.
What does this word say?
Read it, read it and count.
- âRFOREIGN DIALOGUEÁ. - Very good. Very good.
I made sure Michael learned how to read by the age of three.
With Laith, I learned about a program called Your Baby Can Read.
Just DVDs and flash cards, two hours every day.
Ready?
- Yeah. - Look.
âRFOREIGN DIALOGUEÁ.
God.
Laith learned to read at nine months.
Allah.
Write in Arabic. âRLAUGHSÁ.
People would ask me, like, what drives you to do that?
And I was like, I'm not going to let dummies take over the world,
you know, they've gotta be super smart.
They've gotta be wicked smart.
Deadliest. Warrior. Deadliest warrior.
Deadliest warrior.
Fight.
Everybody looked up to me
for being a good mother and devoting myself to his learning,
and it really felt like, "Wow, I succeeded.
I can turn babies into geniuses."
Their education was really important to me,
but it was like a double-edged sword.
Just seeing how incredibly smart they were made me realize,
John, I really want them to go to university
rather than destroy society.
I really want them to contribute to the world.
They had so much potential.
But John wouldn't have it.
He was, like, no.
They don't need a western education.
They don't need university.
They need an Islamic education.
John would take Michael out to the desert with his friends.
They would go shooting sparrows and things.
Michael didn't like it 'cause he loved animals
and he thought it was really sad to be shooting birds and stuff.
His Dad never taught him how to ride a bike,
he didn't teach him how to catch a ball,
but he taught him how to use a gun.
And then one time Michael comes in with a grenade.
I've never seen this in my life.
I've never seen a grenade and it's right in front of me,
and it's my seven-year-old child holding it,
and I w--, I pulled a kitchen knife out on John
and I was waving it around and I was just, like, I'm going to,
one day I'm going to stab you.
I hate what you're doing. You're exposing your kids to this.
I was just so, so mad.
I was, like, you guys are grown men but you are idiots.
I was tired. I, I didn't want to live on the edge.
I didn't--, I got tired of this, the jihiadi life
and I, I really wanted to just live a comfortable family life.
Stable life.
But John had other plans.
âRGUNS FIRINGÁ âRPEOPLE SHOUTINGÁ
Easily the most disastrous outcome of the Arab Spring
was the attempted uprising against Bashar Al Assad in Syria.
Peaceful protests in Syria have turned violent
as rebel groups fight to overthrow
one of the Middle East's last remaining dictators.
In 2013, Syria was an utter hell-scape.
It had been ravaged by Civil War.
The Syrian Government is still committing horrific crimes.
There was violence left and right.
The images are gut-wrenching.
Many of the victim's children, even infants.
When the Syrian Revolution turned very violent,
that created this massive vacuum for jihadist groups to operate.
âREXPLODEÁ
One of the biggest players
was the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham, ISIS.
By 2013, ISIS was controlling large swathes of territory,
mostly in Northern Iraq.
ISIS expanded into Syria because Syria was lawless territory.
From his home in Egypt,
John increasingly saw that Syria
was where his life was leading,
and to some extent Tania and the kids
were becoming encumbrances
and what he really needed to do was to go and fight.
John was pressuring me to go to Syria.
I didn't want to take my kids to a war zone, why would I?
I mean...whatever I dreamed of when I was younger,
they were just dreams and I grew up.
I would read stories about mothers who lost their sons.
I knew that eventually my children would be pressured
to become child soldiers, to fight in Syria,
and I knew I can't handle that.
I will crack. I know I will crack.
But John wanted to go to Syria, so I compromised on Turkey.
I really just thought we were going to live in Istanbul,
but instead we ended up going to Gaziantep.
I didn't even know what Gaziantep was.
We spent the whole day trying to find a place to stay.
The hotels were packed. The prices has sky-rocketed.
On such short notice, we didn't have the money to rent a house.
The only place we had was this refugee hostel.
It's two a.m.
We're standing outside with our luggage bags.
A bus came and it dropped off some Syrians to the hostel
and John went over to talk to the bus driver.
He came to me and he said he knows a place for us to go.
It's only temporary.
So we got on the bus.
Had my babies with me. We covered up at the back and we fell asleep.
As the sun started to rise, I woke up
and then I saw, at the checkpoint,
"Welcome in Syria."
I was panicking.
I was having a breakdown and making a scene and crying.
John said, "Be quite, woman." He said, "What am I supposed to do?
We can't find anywhere to stay.
I swear it's just two weeks."
I was just, like, okay, it's only temporary, it's only temporary.
It's only a few days.
Once we crossed the border, John was questioned by
the militia that were in charge of the town.
Ten minute conversation of interrogating John.
Who are you? Who do you know?
And John said I know the Sheik.
Like call him up and the Sheik says, yeah, take care of him,
take really good care of Yayha and his family.
His life is not to be put on the front lines,
he's way too important to be fighting.
So they knew that they could trust John.
The first place they took us to was the villa in Azaz.
This villa used to belong to a General that was attacked.
The windows were smashed,
and the water tank had been shot so there was no water there.
It was creepy.
I felt like a ghost walking in somebody's home.
We would go to the rooftop of the villa
and you could see the h--, entire city.
There was a hill where the executions happened.
I didn't see any executions.
I was pregnant and I didn't want to leave the house.
So I mainly stayed at home crying.
Yeah, there were all different factions.
Always fighting for power over the area of Azaz.
It would happen every day.
A siren would go off which means we all have to hurry home
because there's going to be a battle.
Stay inside, don't go near the windows.
The kids and I got very sick in Syria.
We didn't have running water.
We didn't have food.
We would just cook whatever we could find.
We were all throwing up, we all had urine infections.
The electricity would go out a lot.
I was six months' pregnant
and I was always dehydrated from vomiting from being pregnant.
The guy who would drop water for us,
he would pick up Michael on a motorcycle
and take Michael to the military base.
It was supposed to be teaching him religion,
they call it Aqidah, the creed.
The very first thing they thought was necessary to teach children
is how evil music is, which infuriated me.
And then John would be, like,
"Well at least he has something to do during the day 'cause
what's he going to do, watch you cry all day?"
I was desperate to get out.
Each day I was waiting for news to get out.
By two weeks, I was, "John, you said this is very temporary.
Let's go."
John said, "I know but the people here want me to stay
and I can't say no.
I have IT skills, I have my English skills.
I am an Islamic scholar and most of the scholars have left.
They're asking me to stay, I can't leave them."
I started begging him to leave with me and he said no,
and then I got mad at him.
I told him to go --- off,
and then he told me to go --- off and I was, like,
is this you saying that I can leave without you?
And he said, "Yeah, just get out of here."
âRCHATTERING IN LOCAL LANGUAGEÁ
I called John's Mom and I said please help us get out.
Call the authorities, tell them what John has done
and that I'm really scared that
my children are going to be raised to be terrorists or
they're going to die.
The American authorities said they can't come and rescue me in Syria,
they said that I would have to make it out by myself to Turkey
and then, once I'm in Turkey,
they said I have to go to the UK
and then they will give me a visa waiver for two weeks
and within those two weeks I have to come to the US, and if I don't
come then then I'm not allowed back in the country at all
because they needed to get all their information
that I had while it was fresh in my mind.
I accepted to collaborate with the authorities.
How did you go from one day living with John,
knowing what he's doing,
hearing about beheadings
to as long as I can get back to the United States
- I'll just collaborate and I'll-- - It wasn't one day though.
It was years I was telling him to collaborate.
So I, like, from 2009
I was saying John just work for the FBI, you know?
But...because I didn't really believe, you know? I just, like,
you know, I, I was already, like,
only involved because there wasn't a way out.
I didn't want to tear my family apart.
I didn't want to lose my husband, and it wasn't because of love.
It was because I needed a father for my children
and I couldn't imagine life without...I, like,
my situation right now is not great as a single mom. I...i--,
âRSIGHSÁ.
It's, like...it's terrible, you know, so...
and I didn't want it to be like this.
John wasn't surprised by my actions.
All he said was there's no way I'm going to take you to
the Turkish airport because you ratted on me,
and I'm pretty certain that there's going to be
people there waiting for me to arrest me.
I was, like, you're going to let me and your kids travel
in a country that we don't know in Turkey by ourselves,
and he was like yeah.
It was a hot September day.
We left at, like, eight in the morning.
I just grabbed my babies, grabbed the bags that we had.
I forgot bottled water.
John thought I had it, I thought he had it
which was a really rookie mistake because it was scorching hot.
We got into a van.
It took us four hours to get to the border.
Every crossing was closed.
There were all these Syrian refugees
sitting in circles and there's this wired fence.
We were told you just have to run.
There is a hole cut out in this barbed wire, so we ran.
We're running to the fence
and then one at a time everybody's going through this barbed wire.
I'm trying to get
my babies through the wire,
and a stroller, and our bags and we're being shot at.
We see bullets hitting the ground and flying.
Finally, me and the kids made it through the barbed wire.
John came through.
On the other side, there was a human trafficking truck.
John paid them $200. He said take them to the bus station.
So we all pack onto this truck.
I saw John turnaround, run back to the fence
and just crossed over the other side to what he thought was freedom.
And I saw him run and not wave or say goodbye or kiss us goodbye.
I was, like, you're actually happy.
And, if anything, that was what broke my heart.
John's parents had booked plane tickets for us
to travel from Gaziantep to Istanbul.
We had a room booked for us at the Raddison Hotel,
and we were sick.
We just all started vomiting non-stop.
I was in so much pain.
I thought I was having a miscarriage.
The hotel had to get an ambulance and I had to go to the ER.
They had to put an IV
because they said I was just dangerously dehydrated,
but my kids were in a hotel room without me.
I called John's parents, Tim and Martha,
and I was crying and Tim was crying,
and Tim saying what do you want me to do? âRCRYINGÁ
I can't help you from here.
âRCRYINGÁ And I was, like, all I want, you're a doctor,
just tell me I'm going to be okay 'cause I was really scared.
You know, the pain was excruciating.
But we made it out.
When we returned to the US,
we were living with John's parents in Texas.
âRBABY CRYINGÁ âRINDISTINCT CHATTERINGÁ
I gave birth to Yani, my youngest.
âRBABY COOINGÁ
It was really hard for my kids when they first came to America.
Michael was very worried about us not being Muslim now.
We were under pressure, you know,
it was voluntarily but also under pressure
by living with John's parents now to not be Muslim.
I was already losing my religion,
but what they struggled to understand is
that it's not something I could just change overnight.
A day or two after I was over the jet-lag and,
and then I stated speaking and reporting to the authorities.
I disclosed everything I possibly could remember, every detail.
Every single person I met who was with John.
I was very willing to participate and help because
I wanted to do something to make up for,
for, you know, the past and,
and so there was never any, like, I was never coerced. Not once.
And they always made it clear, you know, you don't have to
but this--, you know, as long as you understand it's voluntary,
and I said, "Yes, sure, absolutely."
Eventually, I started working undercover.
It just came to, well, I need a job and I don't have a college degree.
All I have is my knowledge in extremism and this.
I would start taking to jihadists and getting information,
passing it along to the authorities.
I would record conversations.
They were prompting me and I would do what I was told, like,
they would say ask him this, ask this way
and I would do the best I could.
It was in--, some acting on my behalf but, âRSIGHSÁ, I did my job.
I owed this country and that's the way I could help.
It was the only way I really could help at the time.
John was reaching out to make sure that me and the kids made it.
John wanted to see the kids on the video,
and they wanted to see him so I allowed it,
while recording what's in the background and, you know,
getting as much information as I could.
I was actually asking him not to fight.
I was, like, please, whatever you do, don't fight.
Promise me you're not going to fight.
Was there ever a moment where you were
fearful that you would have criminal charges?
No.
Because I didn't have, I didn't know, like...did I commit a crime?
I didn't join ISIS.
I didn't commit any violence.
I didn't decapitate anybody. I wasn't policing anyone.
My crime was being an idiot and getting married too young
and joining a really bad idea.
That was my mistake, but it's not a crime.
For a lot of women who traveled in support of ISIS,
what we often hear is well I, I didn't engage in combat.
I didn't commit any acts of violence.
What is important to remember is that the ISIS enterprise
relied on all sorts of functions
and a lot of women who joined were, in fact,
very strong enablers for fighters,
to then go out and commit acts of violence.
In that period of 2013,
when the States realized that individuals
were traveling to join ISIS,
it posed quite a dilemma
because it wasn't illegal to go to Syria or Iraq
and that act in itself didn't really come with criminal penalties.
So there's a real question,
not just in legal terms, but moral and ethical terms
what constituted being part of ISIS?
What constituted permitting
the kind of brutality that they exacted on their populations.
However, within a few years,
there was a big effort
the United States certainly spear-headed this effort
to adopt laws that make it illegal to travel to join ISIS.
At the time,
everybody was confused about why would anyone go to Syria?
Why do people join ISIS?
Tania, she was conservative before she ever met John
and she was conservative
in a, a milieu where it wasn't demanded of her.
She chose to be that way,
and then, eventually, she traded that for America.
John came from money. He came from privilege.
He had everything, and he traded it for nothing.
After the departure of his wife and family, John suddenly was free.
Okay. âRFOREIGN DIALOGUEÁ.
Right now I'm in Syria, and I've been here for about four months.
I came here as I wanted to help.
I saw the situation was pretty bad
and I decided it was time for me to take some action
rather than just speaking about it.
Pretty quickly, John picks up arms.
He fights.
He's badly wounded at one point.
John wrote to tell me he got hit by a rocket launcher
and it sent shrapnel all up his spine and I was, like,
you told me you wouldn't fight and he was, like,
well, you know, first it's my duty.
Everybody has to do it, and I'm just doing what my forefathers did.
John, from his perspective, was
following in the footsteps of his grandfather
who fought in World War Two,
and his Dad, he was a Colonel in the Air Force
and John was a Commander
and he told me he was proud of that.
He was picked up eventually by enemies of ISIS.
He spent months in prison.
Eventually he got out.
At that point he realized that the only place he would really be safe
would be in ISIS territory.
So he got on a truck and went to the de facto capital of ISIS, Raqqa.
By the time John arrived in Raqqa,
ISIS had declared itself as a Caliphate.
Muslim militants in Iraq have declared
the complete of the Islamic State
with the new Caliphate under their leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.
âRFOREIGN DIALOGUEÁ
Baghdadi had graduated from being a
courier within the Islamic State to being the leader of ISIS.
âRFOREIGN DIALOGUEÁ
When Baghdadi stood up and said,
"I'm the Khalif"
he was claiming that he was the leader of all Muslims in the world,
and everybody had to give allegiance to him.
So, Ali, this new video we have from ISIS, it's, it's a little unusual.
The creation of an Islamic caliphate--
- Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi-- - Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi--
Terrorists group ISIS--
Today they announced a new name,
- the Islamic State. - They say they want to be known
as a caliphate right now.
It was a huge propaganda success.
ISIS knew exactly what they're doing.
There was not a television station on the planet
that was not broadcasting in detail what happened that day.
- Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. - The message was we are here,
we are staying. This is our ruler, come join the Caliphate.
The initial analysis shows it is indeed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi b--
I remember being at the kitchen sink and
hearing on Fox News that ISIS actually declared a Caliphate.
The timing was, for me, shocking.
I just left Islam. I stopped praying the day I left.
I threw off my hijab and I was happy,
I was happy not to be a Muslim but when that happened,
I thought, man God hates me because, if there is an Allah,
and this is what I wanted for so long, and I turned my back on that.
It was just shocking.
I didn't like it that John was going to be able to say I told you so,
âRCHUCKLESÁ that di--, I didn't want to hear that but it felt like it.
âRPEOPLE SHOUTING AND FIRING GUNSÁ
After the declaration of the Caliphate, ISIS went into top gear.
When ISIS comes to town,
they come with a black banner and they announce law and order.
They impose manners of dress, strict observance of prayer.
There's a list of crimes that often have corporal punishments
including execution, crucifixion.
Punishments that, for most of the rest of the world,
including the vast majority of Muslims, are deeply objectionable.
âRGUNS FIRINGÁ
They literally victimized entire communities of so-called citizens.
For many people who lived under ISIS's brutal regime,
it wasn't a choice of whether you join ISIS or not.
You didn't really have a choice of anywhere to go.
And it's worth pointing out that more Muslims have died
from ISIS's actions than any other community.
âRFOREIGN LANGUAGEÁ
We'll continue to strike the necks of your people.
ISIS was creating videos emphasizing, of course,
the violence but there were other videos that were showing
how nice the Islamic state was.
How it was a family-friendly place.
You can live not just a fully Islamic life, but a happy one.
Something in their narrative was very compelling.
There was an unprecedented outflow of foreign fighters to go join ISIS,
20,000 is the number we've estimated.
Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.
Of the couple of hundred or so Americans who were part of ISIS,
John might have been the most influential
as a propagandist and been the one who rose highest
in the leadership structures of ISIS itself.
In one of the Islamic State videos, you can see John Georgelas.
âRFOREIGN DIALOGUEÁ
and elevated them through their obedience to him.
John was really trying to show the world
that there was a whole civilization
where every aspect would be fully Islamic.
You enjoin what is good and forbid what is evil and believe in Allah.
John was writing on behalf of ISIS
in ISIS's main propaganda outlet,
Dabiq Magazine which published upwards of a dozen issues.
He wrote an article titled Why We Hate You and Why We Fight You.
This article said, in effect,
we exist because Islam requires us to exist.
We do these things because Islam requires us to do them.
Very few people actually thought that ISIS had it right,
but those who did were convinced somehow,
and it was people like John who did the convincing.
But John Georgelas went dark,
not communicating as far as I can tell with anybody outside ISIS.
At the end of 2016,
right around the time I published an article about John.
The focus of Wood's book excerpt in The Atlantic Magazine this month
is an ISIS member known as Yayha The American.
We go to Tania Joya who is British.
Tania Joya, married one of the most senior commanders
- of so-called Islamic State. - Tania Joya,
she followed her husband, an American jihadi,
to Egypt, Turkey and Syria.
Once Graeme Wood published the article,
I started giving interviews to journalists.
I felt like I owed the American public an explanation.
Why should anyone believe you?
I mean that's your, your journey is night and day.
I speak out in public because
I feel I have to make up for the wrong that I did.
I'm a former extremist
and I understand
the minds of extremists.
Do you still love your ex-husband?
Everybody has a good side, everybody has a bad side.
Yeah, you know what, I'm afraid
ISIS terrorists don't have a good side
and so I'm afraid we're going to end the interview right there.
Where is your ex-husband right now?
I don't know where he is or what's happened to him since then.
Once I was talking to the media,
John stopped all contact with me.
The last email I got form John,
he wanted me to pass on this message to the boys when they're older.
Could I have you read the letter?
I haven't read it in years.
Let me just read it in my head first.
Sure.
Roll my eyes and cringe.
âRSIGHSÁ.
I have devoted my life to seeking the truth.
I've spent countless hours and many sleepless nights
researching through thousands of books of old,
and I have experienced more of this life than most men
who have lived to be grandfathers.
It's him bragging again.
I have found the truth firstly in Islam,
and secondly in waging jihad for Allah's cause.
I have never felt so much honour and glory until I reached
the lands of the Islamic State and became a mujihadeen in its ranks.
I love you all and I hope to see you again in this life but
the true moment of ecstasy will be when we are reunited in Jannah,
Insha'Allah.
Your father, Abu Hassan Yayha âRUNSURE OF NAMEÁ.
âRLAUGHSÁ. Poor guy.
I never read it to them.
I am not going to give it to them.
That's...you know, he's telling them to wage jihad.
Do you think John is alive?
I don't know.
I really don't know.
If John were to be captured,
do you think he should go to prison?
Oh yeah, I mean but he needs a trial.
If he's captured, and he goes to court,
and if I had to be a witness I would do what I have to do.
As hard as it would be, I would do it.
And it would be hard because?
It's awkward. I am, like,
being a witness against somebody who claims to love me
and love my children,
and there aren't many people in this world
who love me and my children so it would be hard that way.
I do feel like he still lives through me, just very hard.
So.. âRLAUGHSÁ. I don't want to cry.
Those ten years...he was my master,
and he was my best friend,
and the father of my children, and my teacher.
I shared his legacy.
During the time when John went dark,
ISIS was being chased out of their territory.
People of his stature were being targeted
personally with drone strikes.
And then, in 2019,
ISIS in its main territory was resoundingly defeated.
It could be the case that John was obliterated in the drone strike.
It could be somehow possible he survived
and that he's alive to this day.
You just don't know yet.
Tania, tell me where we are now.
We're here at my house in Texas.
We've been here for seven-and-a-half years.
I think I'm pretty Americanized now.
I'm fully Americanized.
I can't believe it was less than ten years ago,
because it feels like another life.
It feels like my past life.
Hey boys, which one of you wants to go up and be the President?
- Me. - I.
Which President do you want to be like?
I want to be like George Washington.
Oh, did you know that âRUNSURE OF WORDÁ
actually means Farmer George in Arabic?
Corey, I just tagged you.
I raised my kids with John's parents.
First it was hard for me to share the children
and not control every aspect of how I want them to be raised.
John's Dad, Tim, does everything, like, financially.
He should be retired
but he still works as a doctor to provide for the kids.
They've had to sacrifice so much of their life
but Martha's, she's just always overjoyed about it.
She's a living grandmother, and all the grandchildren love their Yaya.
I like it that they're in a loving environment.
That's so important.
I'd be in a homeless shelter and my kids would be
in foster care without Tim and Martha.
My kids have it good, but it's not perfect.
They have a nice life.
Do your children ask you now about their Dad?
They don't ask me a lot about their Dad anymore.
Fast. You're too fast.
Go away, you can't come.
My younger two kids, when they play,
one plays the Dad, one plays the son.
Oh no, Yayha's dead.
And they've always role-played. What is it like to have a Dad.
I don't know how to, to fill that void.
I don't think I can.
Michael is now 16,
and he goes through phases of
learning an ideology and then adopting it,
then realizing its flaws and moves on.
And he's always wanting to be at the extreme end of everything.
17 is when John converted to Islam.
17, 18, that's when I was radicalizing.
Michael does have a tendency of finding these You Tubers
who are very radical thinking.
He's drawn to those voices.
When I came back to America, I got bullied at school.
You know, being the outsider,
being like the kid who everyone thought was a terrorist,
there were people who would tell me how bad
I was because I was a Muslim.
I believe what is right and what's wrong matters a lot.
My Dad,
he was always one who knew what was right and who knew what was wrong.
He had a good soul within him.
In many ways, Michael and I are very similar.
I'm totally that kind of person where I am one extreme or the other,
and I make big mistakes.
At least now
I am not going to let other people's mistakes be my mistake.
It's better to make my own mistakes.
I think I am just a radical person,
but I could never be a radical slave to Allah ever again.
I'm sharing my story to hopefully prevent other people
from being groomed into cults and extreme ideologies.
If we don't understand the problem, then it's hard to heal from.
What would you say you're seeking now?
A normal life. âRLAUGHSÁ I want a normal life.