Undercover Jihadi Bride: Inside Islamic State’s Recruitment Networks

Undercover Jihadi Bride: Inside Islamic State’s Recruitment Networks
Anna Erelle

Previously published as ‘In the Skin of a Jihadist’Twenty year-old “Mélodie”, a recent convert to Islam, meets the leader of an ISIS brigade on Facebook. In 48 hours he has ‘fallen in love’ with her, calls her every hour, urges her to marry him, join him in Syria in a life of paradise – and join his jihad.Anna Erelle is the undercover journalist behind "Melodie". Created to investigate the powerful propaganda weapons of Islamic State, “Melodie” is soon sucked in by Bilel, right-hand man of the infamous Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. An Iraqi for whose capture the US government has promised $10 million, al-Baghdadi is described by Time Magazine as the most dangerous man in the world and by himself as the caliph of Islamic State. Bilel shows off his jeep, his guns, his expensive watch. He boasts about the people he has just killed.With Bilel impatient for his future wife, “Melodie” embarks on her highly dangerous mission, which – at its ultimate stage – will go very wrong … Enticed into this lethal online world like hundreds of other young people, including many young British girls and boys, Erelle’s harrowing and gripping investigation helps us to understand the true face of terrorism.

Copyright (#ua7c63389-a74d-5013-b97f-7f9a8c0f4eb4)

HarperCollinsPublishers

This eBook first published in Great Britain as In The Skin of a Jihadist by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2015

Copyright © 2015 by Anna Erelle

English language translation © HarperCollinsPublishers

Originally published in France in 2015 by Éditions Robert Laffont under the title Dans la peau d’une djihadiste

Anna Erelle asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library

Cover photography posed by a model and in no way related

to any of the people or events portrayed in this book.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780008139568

Ebook Edition © May 2015 ISBN: 9780008139575

Version: 2016-01-07

Dedication (#ua7c63389-a74d-5013-b97f-7f9a8c0f4eb4)

FOR ÉRIC AND NOËL

FOR PAULINE AND JÉRÔME

Epigraph (#ua7c63389-a74d-5013-b97f-7f9a8c0f4eb4)

Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism. . . . Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction.

ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN, “A WORLD SPLIT APART,”

HARVARD UNIVERSITY COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS, JUNE 8, 1978

The following events took place during the spring of 2014, two months before the Islamic State occupied Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq, and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared a worldwide caliphate.

Contents

Cover (#ud9489d79-3c3c-531c-9df7-fdeaa9f33039)

Copyright (#ub3936489-577c-55e1-a525-f4cb11c36976)

Dedication (#u077a0467-edb7-5c04-a3ac-52b229001389)

Epigraph (#u3d03516f-aeef-530a-a6fd-f6df92a18fdf)

Paris, ten days earlier (#u0fb24eec-4354-561d-9cd5-4c386c645ea1)

The same night (#u07dc3359-42e3-597c-b0e9-a9aadaa6f9f5)

Saturday morning (#ub6b5632c-91c7-5da4-9935-8ca224419b8c)

That night (#ucc33ea8a-87f3-530d-8ba6-f760d410ead0)

Sunday night (#ua3213b9f-d9c5-5196-b57a-f18992de14fe)

Monday (#u65f20739-4303-522d-9d64-6697792b5aab)

Monday, 8 p.m. (#u50f9dce5-2de3-5860-869d-a637646bc7c5)

Monday, 9:30 p.m. (#u25a18beb-a28a-5a54-a261-cf8043994236)

Mélodie (#litres_trial_promo)

Thursday (#litres_trial_promo)

Thursday, 10 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)

A few days later (#litres_trial_promo)

In the afternoon (#litres_trial_promo)

The same day, 5:30 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)

Monday, 7:30 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)

Monday, 8 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)

Two days later (#litres_trial_promo)

The next day (#litres_trial_promo)

Thursday (#litres_trial_promo)