A German teenager has said she was an "idiot" for joining Islamic State and that the decision has wrecked her future, in her first interview since her arrest by Iraqi forces.

Her case garnered worldwide attention after she was photographed being dragged out of the ruins of Mosul near the end of the battle to liberate the city in July.

Linda Wenzel, 17, claimed her decision was a "stupid idea" but showed little remorse in the first meeting with her family since she left Pulsnitz, near Dresden, for Syria in July last year.

SUPPLIED Linda Wenzel, German teenager captured in Mosul

She was reunited with her mother Katharina and sister Miriam at the Palace of Justice in Baghdad, and a video of the meeting showed Linda telling her mother: "I do not know how I came up with the stupid idea to go to the Islamic State. I have ruined my life."

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Linda said she fell in love with a Chechen man online and he convinced her to travel to terror organisation's so-called caliphate in Syria.

She travelled on her mother's documents to Turkey. She married the man, who she called Mohammed, but said: "I don't know [his surname], something Chechen."

He was later killed in an air strike, and she was left alone in Iraq.

Iraqi security sources told The Daily Telegraph Linda had been trained as a sniper and was found with a gun.

However, she claimed that she never touched a weapon: "I don't know how such a thing works", she said.

Next month, she will face trial in Baghdad, where she stands accused of being a member of a terrorist organisation. Iraqi authorities have so far refused to extradite her to Germany.