The wife of British suicide bomber Jamal al-Harith has revealed for the first time that her husband was radicalised a decade after his release from Guantánamo Bay by the Islamic State recruiter Raphael Hostey.

Shukee Begum also said he was given “substantially less” than £1m in compensation for his detention from the British government.



Speaking on Channel 4 News she said that when Harith was released from detention in 2004 he posed no threat. She explained that it was only in 2013 that his views became more extreme after seeing “atrocities committed by the regime in Syria”.

Around this time he started associating with Hostey, also known as Abu Qaqa al-Britaini, who was killed in a drone strike in 2014.



Harith, born Ronald Fiddler, was taken to Guantánamo in 2001 after being discovered in a Taliban prison in Kandahar, Afghanistan. He was held in Guantánamo without charge until his release in 2004, which followed lobbying from the British government for the release of some UK nationals held in the US-run prison camp. His family said he was “utterly changed” by his experiences there. He travelled to Syria in 2014 and social media released earlier this week showed him apparently preparing to carry out a suicide bombing near Mosul, Iraq.

Although Begum claimed “there was not much money left” after the out-of-court settlement following his release from Guantánamo, she admitted that taxpayers’ money may have paid for his travel to Syria to join Isis.

Begum also said Harith was “stopped and questioned by UK authorities for six hours on his return” from a trip to Gaza in 2009 but apart from this she said she believed that “he was not monitored”.

She said her husband had told her that he was “involved in the distribution of aid in al-Bab on the Iraq/Syria border and was ideologically opposed to suicide attacks”.

Despite her attempts to get Harith to leave his jihadist cell, he told her he was committed to the war in Syria.



In 2015 she even travelled to the war-torn country with her five children in a bid to persuade him to return home with them. But ultimately she said she failed in her mission.