A woman who left Alabama to join ISIS says she felt 'broken' after she was stripped of her US citizenship

• Hoda Muthana left America at the age of 20 to join the terrorist group ISIS in Syria.
• While she was overseas, Muthana was stripped of her US citizenship and banned from the country.

A woman who ran away from home in Alabama to join ISIS said she felt "broken" when the US revoked her citizenship for aiding the terror group.

Hoda Muthana spoke in an interview with The News Movement (TNM), conducted from a prison camp in Syria where she is being held by US-allied forces.

She said she wanted to return to the US, and volunteered to serve time in prison if necessary.

That seems unlikely to happen — the Obama administration stripped Muthana of citizenship in 2016. In 2019, then-President Donald Trump tweeted that he had personally barred Muthana from the US.

And in 2021 a federal appeals court affirmed that she wasn't a US citizen, and rejected her father's attempt to compel the government to let her return.

The US argued that Muthana should never have been treated as a US citizen since her father was a diplomat for Yemen when she was born.

The appeals court supported that decision, describing Hoda as "a prominent spokeswoman for ISIS on social media, advocating the killing of Americans and encouraging American women to join ISIS."

But in her interview, a visibly emotional Muthana said: "I still believe I'm a [US] citizen now."

"I've been through a lot of horrible horrible things in my life. One of the worst feelings I've ever had is someone telling me I wasn't an American citizen. That broke me completely."

"If I need to sit in prison and do my time, I will do it ... I won't fight against it."

In November 2014, Muthana told her family that she was going to Atlanta on a school trip, but instead flew to Turkey, and crossed into ISIS-held territory in Syria.

During her time with ISIS Muthana married three jihadi fighters, was widowed twice, and gave birth to a baby boy.

The Counter Extremism Project, a research nonprofit, said she promoted ISIS propaganda during her time with the group, tweeting in 2014 her intention to burn her US passport and calling for violent attacks in the US.

In her interview, Muthana claimed those tweets were sent by someone else in ISIS after they took her phone. Muthana eventually fled the group during its downfall and was captured by Kurdish forces.

After she expressed a desire to return to the US with her child, former President Donald Trump tweeted in February 2019 that he instructed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo not to let her come back.

In the TNM interview, Muthana claimed that she was a "victim of ISIS" and that she was brainwashed by online traffickers in 2014 into joining the group.

"Of course, I regret coming here," she told TNM. "If I could take it back I would do it in a heartbeat. I'm hoping my government looks at me as someone young at the time and naive."