A dual citizen of the US and Canada, who left the Great White North four years ago to join ISIS, is holed up in a refugee camp in Syria with the Alabama “ISIS bride” — and pleading to return home, according to a report.
“I don’t have words for how much regret I have,” Kimberly Gwen Polman, 46, told the New York Times from the al-Hawl refugee camp in northeastern Syria, the same place where 24-year-old Hoda Muthana of Hoover, Ala., resides.
Polman, 46, a Reformed Mennonite who was born in Hamilton, Ontario, took up work after college at a Muslim school, and eventually converted to Islam, according to the newspaper.
She said she was particularly shaken by images she saw online of Muslims getting killed in Syria, and said that at one point, she learned she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder — though it was not immediately clear if the photos were the cause. Two siblings told the outlet that she was told she suffered from a mental illness.
Polman, whose mom is American and father Canadian, said she was smuggled into the caliphate in 2015, using an American passport to fly from Vancouver to Istanbul.
Her family said it didn’t have a clue about her plans.
“She gave me a hug goodbye and said we’d have tea when she got back,” according to Polman’s unidentified sister, who told the paper that Kimberly said she was going to Austria and would only be gone for two weeks.
Polman, who studied legal administration in college, had taken an interest in nursing and started corresponding with an ISIS militant, whom she later married, the report said.
The Islamic State fighter, who said his name was Abu Aymen, had told Polman that her nursing skills were needed in the growing caliphate, she said.
Recently, Polman fled from ISIS’ last stronghold, following in the footsteps of Muthana — who had previously urged Twitter followers to commit massacres at parades back home and who had escaped with her 18-month-old son.
Muthana is now begging US officials to let her return home.
Polman’s break with the caliphate came about a year after her arrival. She claims that she previously tried to escape, but was caught by ISIS intelligence agents and imprisoned in a jail cell in Raqqa, where she spent her days counting all 4,422 tiles on the walls, according to the report.
Polman said she was repeatedly interrogated — and one night, she was raped.
“They took me down the hallway, and it was really dark,” she said. “There were metal doors, heavy ones, and I slipped, I remember, and they kicked me.”
Eventually Polman and Muthana befriended each other and discussed making a break for it.
“It’s hard to change your mind-set when you have lost everything and sacrificed everything,” Polman told the news outlet. “Even if you feel a tug that tells you something’s not right here, this isn’t O.K., and that there’s too many holes here, something’s wrong, I think it’s very, very difficult when you feel like you have burned bridges, to know how to shift.”
After both Polman and Muthana surrendered to forces fighting ISIS, they reached out to the Red Cross for help.
Polman and Muthana both told the newspaper they realized it could be hard to convince those back home that they were truly regretful.
“How do you go from burning a passport to crying yourself to sleep because you have so much deep regret? How do you do that?” Polman asked. “How do you show people that?”