'Stab them and poison them': Australian Islamic State bride calls for killing of teachers
Zehra Duman's parents didn't see she was radicalised, until it was too late
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 21 May, 2015, 10:11pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 21 May, 2015, 10:11pm
Associated Press in Canberra
Duman has called on jihadist Muslims to poison teachers.
Quietly - almost secretly - Zehra Duman morphed from Australian private school student to Islamic State bride and online recruiter for the movement. Her family did not see it coming.
So when the 21-year-old Turkish-Australian gave up her middle-class life in Melbourne for faraway Raqqa, Islamic State's centre in war-ravaged Syria, people were astonished.
"We did not notice any extremist tendencies in her behaviour," said Saniye Coskundag, acting principal of Sirius College's Keysborough campus.
"She's been brainwashed, she wasn't like this three or four months ago," her father Davut Duman told Melbourne's Herald-Sun newspaper in an article published December 28.
By then, Duman was wed to Islamic State soldier Mahmoud Abdullatif, 23, who reportedly left his own Melbourne home last year. The couple announced their wedding online on December 11, with a photo of her dowry that included an assault rifle.
Now calling herself Zehra Abdullatif or Umm ("Mother") Abdullatif, the Muslim fighter's wife told her online followers her parents had no clue she would elope to Islamic State (IS).
"They were shocked, as I never have been public with my jihadi views. But also heartbroken, as my mum was very close to me ... and she knows she will never see me again," she said on her now suspended Ask.fm page, according to radio reports.
She has been answering questions on social media for "wannabe jihadi brides" and urged both men and women who do not come to the Middle East to wage war at home.
"Kill Kuffar [non-believers] in alleyways, stab them and poison them. Poison your teachers. Go to haram [prohibited] restaurants and poison the food in large quantities," she wrote on her Twitter account, which also has been suspended.
The March 31 tweet was recorded by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based think tank.
Australian security agencies have noticed an increase in Australian women leaving for the Middle East to marry Islamic State fighters.
It is not clear how or when Duman first met her husband, who she said had died just five weeks after their wedding.
She said online she entered Syria alone in late November and was given a "wali", or guardian. She advised potential IS brides who follow her to travel with a "mahram," a male chaperone such as a father or brother.
Her father told the Herald-Sun that he had not given up hope she would return : "We're trying desperately, trying to bring our daughter home," he said.
But when asked on Twitter what she missed about Australia, Duman's reply on April 4 was simple and numeric: "0".
