2024 Nominees

The Shamima Begum Story - I'm Not A Monster

BBC News Long Form Audio, BBC Sounds, BBC 5

UK

- Podcast: Non-Fiction

Investigating the story of Shamima Begum. At 15, she ran away from her London home with two school friends to join ISIS in war torn Syria. Now she wants to come back. It’s a tale that has gripped the world, but there are different ways to tell it. When news broke that she’d fled, Josh Baker was filming in her local mosque and captured the unfolding crisis on tape. That was back in 2015 and he’s been following her story ever since. In interviews spanning more than a year, she’s now given him what she claims is her full account of everything that happened. And he’s been testing that account – retracing her journey from a London bus stop to a Syrian detention camp where she now lives. He found the person who convinced her to join the Islamic State group in the first place, identified the double agent who delivered her to the group, recorded the first in depth interview with the fighter she married and located people who knew her and knew of her when she was living in the caliphate.