Teen Says Life Under IS Was 'Really Hard'
Marlin Stivani Nivarlain, 16, said the house she was living in in Mosul, Iraq, had no water or electricity and she had no money.
A Swedish teenage girl has given a rare
insight into what it is like living under Islamic State control -
describing it as "really hard".
Marlin Stivani Nivarlain, 16, said the house she was staying in in Mosul, Iraq, had no water or electricity and she had no money.
Despite being under IS control, she claimed she managed to contact her mother and tell her she wanted to go home.
Her mother spoke to authorities, which led to her rescue by Kurdish security forces near Mosul earlier this month.
Marlin, from Boras in the south of Sweden, claimed she was duped by her boyfriend into travelling to the IS territory last year.
Describing their relationship in Sweden, she said in broken English: "First we was good together but then he started to look at the ISIS videos and start speak about them and stuff like that.
"Then he said he wanted to go to ISIS and I said to him, 'OK, no problem', because I didn't know what ISIS means, what Islam is, and nothing."
The couple left Sweden in late May 2015 and used buses and trains to travel across Europe until they reached the Turkish border province of Gaziantep, where they crossed into Syria.
IS militants then transported them by bus with other men and women to Mosul in neighbouring Iraq and provided them with a house.
Marlin said: "In Sweden we have everything and
when I was there I didn't have anything. No water, no electricity and I didn't have any money either.
She is now under the protection of the Kurds and is set to be reunited with her family.
Security services believe hundreds of Western men and women have left home to join IS since the group seize large parts of Iraq and Syria in June 2014.
Last autumn, the Swedish Security Service, Sapo, said 300 Swedes had gone to join extremist groups in Syria and Iraq during the previous three years.
It said 40 had been killed in combat.
More than 100 had since returned home
