When I Join ISIS I Really Got To Know The Meaning Of Terror

Laura Passoni, 30, was working in a supermarket in the Belgian city of Charleroi when she met her future husband Osama Rayan, who was of Tunisian origin.

The mother-of-two said she fell in love with him and agreed to move with him back to Tunisia, and eventually to Syria. They lived in al-Bab, near the city of Aleppo in Syria, which was controlled by ISIS between 2014 and March 2015. She said that it was only when she moved to Syria that she realised the promises from ISIS were a lie.

Miss Passoni said: 'I was not forced to become a Muslim, I was persuaded. You just get washed away, like trying to stand against a waterfall.'

I went there voluntarily and willingly, I converted to become a Muslim and then I was radicalised, and I became convinced that the caliphate was only place for me and my family to live.

'Once I got there though I really got to know the meaning of terror.'

Speaking about life under ISIS, she said:

'There were no taxes to pay, health care was free and they used a lot of alternative medicine, cures never seen in European health care but life there was very expensive and the money were not enough.'

She said she was confined to the house where all she could do was the cleaning and cooking, and was only allowed to leave when she was dressed in a burka and with her husband. I was forbidden to do anything, I just had to take care of the home and children. I could not leave the house or use the internet without the presence of a man. I was never treated violently but she felt like a prisoner.

'I started to become very afraid that they might take my children away. It was just the opposite of what they promised in the propaganda of the Caliphate. I decided I wanted to escape when I realised there was a very real risk my son might end up a terrorist.'

Miss Passoni took her four-year-old son from a previous relationship with her as well as the child she had with her new husband. After returning from Syria she was arrested by police but when she persuaded them her remorse was genuine she was given five years' probation and fined 15,000 euros (£11,800).

She was also banned from using all social media networks. Belgian social workers removed her children from her for three months, before eventually handing them to their grandparents.

She said: 'I accepted the punishment. To be honest it was a relief compared to the hell that I went through in Syria.'