Swedish Teen Rescued from ISIS Speaks Out, Says Life was ‘Hard’

By Cheri Cheng - 24 Feb '16 15:18PM

The Swedish teen who was rescued by Kurdish Special Forces has spoken out about her experience in Iraq.

The 16-year-old girl, whose name has been properly spelled as Marlin Stivani Nivarlain, talk about how she got sucked into moving to the Middle East by her then boyfriend, who she met in mid-2014.

"First it was good together, but then he started to look at ISIS videos and speak about them and stuff like that," Nivarlain said on Kurdistan 24, which is a news station that is based in Irbil. "Then he said he wanted to go to ISIS, and I said, 'Okay, no problem,' because I did not know what ISIS meant or what Islam was - nothing."

ISIS is another term for the terrorist group known as the Islamic State. In the interview, Nivarlain also talked about how hard it was to live with the extremists.

"In Sweden we have everything, and when I was there, I did not have anything," she said. "I did not have any money either. It was a really hard life. When I had a phone I started to contact my mum and I said: 'I want to go home.'"

Nivarlain detailed her journey to Syria as well. According to her account, they left Sweden last May and took the train to Turkey. They then crossed over to Syria on a bus from Gaziantep, a southern city in Turkey. Shortly after being picked up by ISIS members, she was moved into a home near the Iraqi city of Mosul, where she was rescued in a raid conducted on Feb. 17, according to the official statement issued by the Kurdistan Region Security Council. The house reportedly did not electricity, water and other necessities.

At the end of the interview, Nivarlain thanked the people who rescued her.

"I want to thank them to send me back to Sweden and meet my family again and have a happy life," she said.

Although Nivarlain shared her journey, she did not talk about giving birth to a child. Some Swedish reports had claimed that she was pregnant when she made the journey and had given birth in Syria.

Nivarlain is in the process of getting ready to return to Sweden.