She was a blonde-haired, blue eyed Catholic girl whose family was a pillar of
the
Dutch
town of Maastricht. He was a smiling, bicycle-riding Dutch former soldier -
a man considered such an asset to his country he was encouraged to try out
for their elite special forces.
And yet the marriage of Sterlina Petalo and Omar Yilmaz was, for their
families, anything but a cause for celebration.
Yilmaz, 26, was one of the most high-profile Europeans to become a jihadi,
travelling to Syria to live in the
Islamic
State and fight on behalf of the extremists. He gloried in the
teenage fantasy of war - posting a series of Instagram photos of himself
pouting at the camera on a motorbike, amid bombed-out buildings in his
combat fatigues, AK47 slung nonchalantly over his shoulder. Miss Petalo was
a recent convert to Islam, who fell in love with Yilmaz after seeing him on
television, picturing him as a Robin Hood figure.
Last week their story took a remarkable twist when it was revealed that Miss
Petalo had in fact returned to her hometown - after her mother travelled to
the Turkish-Syrian border to bring the 19-year-old home from the
jihadist-held city of Raqqa.
“Sometimes you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” said her mother, Monique
Verbert. “She rang me and said 'Take me home.’ But she could not leave Raqqa
without help.”
The pair arrived back in the Netherlands on Wednesday, said Annemarie Kemp, a
spokeswoman for the public prosecutor’s office. Clad in a niqqab, with only
her eyes showing, the teenager - who has changed her name to Aicha - was
photographed being driven through the town on her way to custody.
“Upon her arrival, Aicha was detained at once on suspicion of crimes
threatening state security,” said Ms Kemp.
Miss Petalo is being held in a police cell - the prosecutor, Roger Bos, ruled
on Friday that she should be detained for questioning for three more days.
Mrs Verbert, 49, an administrator for BP, argued that her daughter’s flight
to Syria was little more than teenage infatuation. Today Monday November 24 the court will
decide whether to press charges.
Note EU-Digest: Every
civilized human being should condemn the violence and terror IS is
using to instill fear and terror in the areas where they operate. In
that same breath one should also condemn social media and the
International Press for publicizing these horrific scenes of barbarism,
including the decapitation of body parts. This is pure commercially
based sensationalism, which can only lead to popularizing these horrific
acts in the minds of susceptible young people - case in point Ms Petalo
who acted upon her teenage fantasy of a "glorified" war and followed
this "insanely obsessed man" into certain disaster.
Kudos to her mother for taking the proper action to bring her daughter back to reality and safety.
Read more: Dutch jihadi bride: 'Is she a victim or a suspect?' - Telegraph
