Islamic State matchmaker Tooba Gondal among four women deported from Turkey to France along with her seven children

Islamic State matchmaker Tooba Gondal among four women deported from Turkey to France along with her seven children

A French woman who is accused of acting as an ISIS ‘matchmaker’ has been deported from Turkey to her country of origin.

Tooba Gondal, 25, moved to London as a child and had previously claimed that she had permanent British residence but the Home Office issued her with an exclusion order last November, which bars her from ever returning to the UK.

The mother-of-two studied at Goldsmith’s University in London and is accused of acting as a ‘matchmaker’, allegedly arranging marriages for members including ISIS bride Shamima Begum.

The deportation was part of a push by the Turkish government to send foreign fighters back to their home countries.

She was deported alongside three other women and their seven children and has been detained for questioning, facing terror charges.

It’s understood the children have been placed in foster care.

Gondal was born in France but moved to London as a child and previously held British residency.

She lived in Britain before joining ISIS in 2015 and is believed to have recruited several teenage women. She is banned from re-entering Britain.

The 25-year-old is accused of being one of the top recruiters of females to the ranks of ISIS.

Known as a ‘matchmaker’, she allegedly arranged the marriage of Shamima Begum who fled her Bethnal Green home for Syria in 2015.

In October, Gondal wrote an open letter to the Sunday Times from the Ain Issa camp in Raqaa, northern Syria.

‘I desperately wish for the British government to take us back. I want to prove that I am a changed person; a much better individual for society. I offer to help prevent vulnerable Muslims from being targeted and radicalised,’ she said.

Turkey’s incursion into northern Syria caused chaos and she was able to escape into Turkey, where she was later arrested.

Gondal’s son Ibrahim is entitled to British citizenship because his father – who was killed in a suicide bombing in Iraq – was from the UK.

In online rants before the fall of the so-called caliphate, Gondal called Britain a ‘filthy country’ and praised the 2015 terror attack on the Bataclan theatre in Paris.

Turkey confirmed on Monday it had deported 11 French nationals back to France as part of a programme to extradite what it says are foreign terrorist fighters.

The country is holding hundreds of Islamic State suspects and last month launched a programme to repatriate detainees that has caused friction with its NATO allies.

Ankara has accused European countries of being too slow to take back citizens who travelled to the Middle East to fight.

Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said in November that Ankara would repatriate most detainees with suspected links to Islamic State by the end of this year.

The move is forcing European governments to decide how to handle the return of radicalised militants, including those with battlefield experience.

Paris signed an agreement with Ankara five years ago for French nationals arrested by Turkish authorities to be deported in coordination with the French authorities. Turkey has expelled almost 300 French nationals since then, French officials say.

France’s Centre for Analysis of Terrorism said one of the other newly deported women was Amandine Le Coz, who had been married to a Moroccan militant killed in Syria. She joined Islamic State with her husband in 2014.

Source: Daily Mail