http://nypost.com/2015/03/07/my-isis-boyfriend-a-reporters-undercover-life-with-a-terrorist/ (more here)

The young woman sitting in a Parisian cafe could be meeting a friend for lunch. Her figure-hugging purple top sets off her dark hair and intelligent eyes, and her hands are heavy with rings.

Every so often she glances out of the window, but she is not checking whether her friend has arrived: She is nervously hoping the police officer assigned to keep her safe is not too far away.

Anna Erelle is living in terror, having crossed ISIS, also known as the Islamic State. She has received death threats and abuse online and a video of her is circulating accompanied by Arabic text that reads: "Brothers around the world, if you see her, kill her."

On her smartphone, Erelle has a CCTV picture of three British girls " Shamima Begum, 15, Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Amira Abase, 15 " as they passed through Gatwick airport two weeks ago in flowing scarves and skinny jeans, en route to join ISIS in Syria.

"Look at them, they're perfect," she said, pointing a manicured fingernail at the screen. "They seem happy and relaxed. They look just as if they are off to spend a fortnight on the beach in Turkey. Three girls in black would attract attention. Like this, why would anyone notice them"?

"It's the same instruction I was given when I was traveling to Syria. Ditch the niqab, look like a regular girl. Be nice to your family, they won't suspect. Leave nothing behind, not a note or a text message, don't try to explain or they will come after you. Be there one day and the next, disappear."
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Kadiza Sultana (from left), Shamima Begum and Amira Abase go through security at Gatwick airport.Photo: AP (3)
Becoming "Melodie"

It was not actually Erelle who wanted to travel to Syria but "Melodie," a 20-year-old would-be jihadist bride she created on the Internet. Erelle, 32, is a journalist with a weekly news magazine in Paris who specializes in covering the Middle East.

Two years ago, she carried out a series of interviews with teenagers in the banlieues, the poverty-stricken suburbs of Paris which have become a breeding ground for extremism, and was intrigued by how many young Muslims had been radicalized.

"They knew very little about religion. They had hardly read a book and they learnt jihad before religion," she said. "They'd tell me You think with your head, we think with our hearts. They had a romantic view of radicalism. I wondered how that happened."

Even more baffling were the "caliphettes," young women who had grown up in a free society but were obsessed with jihadist fighters. "To them, jihadists are like Brad Pitt, only better because Brad Pitt is not religious," says Erelle.

She decided to join the young Muslim community online and created a fake profile on Facebook and Twitter. Little was known about the growing links between extremists and Muslim teenagers then, and even now the scale of the network is a surprise: Sultana, one of the missing British girls believed to have crossed the border to Syria, was following more than 70 extremists on Twitter and had amassed more than 11,000 followers.

Erelle's intention was to observe exchanges online and build up a picture of how youngsters were being radicalized in France. Then came something unexpected: Melodie attracted the attention of Abou-Bilel, one of ISIS's senior commanders in Raqqa (pictured, top). He fell in love with her, proposed marriage and invited her to join him in the caliphate.

Erelle picked up the first of Bilel's messages around 10 o'clock on a warm evening last April as she threw herself down on the sofa after a day at work and clicked in to see what Melodie's "friends" had been up to: "Salaam alaikum, sister. I see you have watched my video. It has been seen round the world, it's crazy! Are you a Muslim? What do you think of the mujaheddin? Are you thinking of coming to Syria?"



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ISIS fighter Abou-Bilel asked "Melodie" to join him in Syria.

Erelle was astonished. Bilel was a French-born fighter of Algerian descent who had allied himself in Iraq to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIS leader, and moved with him to Syria.

Melodie had been online only a few days but she had already made a wide circle of friends, sharing videos and conversations about jihad. She was supposed to be a girl from a poor area in the south of France whose mother worked long hours and who had no father or brother.

Melodie answered Bilel tentatively, telling him she was a convert and wanted to learn to be a good Muslim. Her messages were accompanied by lots of smiley faces. He was more than encouraging.

Over the next few days, he sent pictures of himself with his 4×4 Jeep and holding a gun. Soon he was telling her that he loved her and she must come to Syria.

"When you get here, you'll be treated like a princess," he promised.

"This is why girls go there," said Erelle. "It's the dream of a good life. They are persuaded that it's a paradise and that they don't have any future in Britain or France and they won't find good husbands and can never be good Muslims surrounded by infidels. Bilel told Melodie she could have a beautiful life, a big apartment and lots of children."

Very soon, Bilel wanted to talk to her in person, on Skype.

"I didn't see the face of a man who would kill or rape, he boasted that he had killed 'dozens' of infidels and those first few seconds were unforgettable," she said. "He was staring at me and when I looked back into his eyes I saw nothing, no religion, no feeling. He is not a good man."

She was not sure she could get away with posing as someone 10 years younger, but Erelle is small and slim and once she had put on a hijab and minimized her makeup, it seemed to work.

"It was very strange to act nice with a terrorist, to be cute and to be saying, "Hey, tell me about your day!" I thought I would feel uncomfortable in a hijab, but the costume helped. When I put it on, I wasn't me anymore."

Bilel was delighted. "You make me laugh a lot!" he told her. As his trust grew, so he began to talk more about his life as a fighter.

He described the bloody battle for Raqqa in 2013 as Islamists fought the Syrian army for control of the city and how he had taken part in beatings and beheadings and tortured prisoners.

"He's a braggart, he's very full of himself, but he is also a man capable of real cruelty. At first I wanted to feel something for him because I like to think there is always something good in humans . . . but there is nothing human in him."