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Syria 'more free' than Vienna says teen jihadist

The Local Austria
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Syria 'more free' than Vienna says teen jihadist
Sabina Selimovic, 15 and friends. Photo: Private

One of the two Viennese teenage girls who is believed to have joined the jihadists in Syria, denied wanting to return home, according to a SMS interview with the French magazine Paris Match.

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15-year-old Sabina Selimovic denied being pregnant, and reported that she felt "free" in her new home.
 
The interview was conducted via SMS, and carried out under the supervision of her husband, according to the magazine.
 
She reportedly said that she and her 17-year-old friend Samra Kesinovic walked over the border from Turkey, taking nothing more than their clothes with them.
 
She said that she and her friend lived with their new husbands, jihadist fighters, for two months in the same house, and then each pair had moved into an apartment.
 
She and her husband now live in a three bedroom apartment.
 
The man whom she said was her husband was a "soldier", she said.
 
When asked what was the biggest difference between living in Austria and in Syria, Selimovic said "Here I am free. I can practice my religion freely. In Vienna, I could not." 
 
The two Viennese girls disappeared on April 10th. According to their parents, Bosnian refugees who arrived in the 1990s to Austria, they announced that they wanted to join the fight in Syria for Islam.
 
In recent weeks, media reports suggested that the girls now want to return to Austria.
 
According to Interpol, the two girls are still listed as missing.  There was no independent verification of the identity of the person being interviewed, nor confirmation that the interview wasn't given under duress.

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