Shamima Begum claims her trip to Syria was “easy” and says she never considered returning, as BBC podcast follows her steps through the ISIS smuggling network

Shamima Begum admitted she never considered returning as she traveled 700 miles across Turkey to join ISIS.

The former London schoolgirl, who was 15 when she made the trip in 2015, tells a new BBC podcast that she could certainly have returned to the UK but decided against it.

When asked by journalist Joshua Baker if she ever thought about reversing her plan to join the death cult, she said: “No, not on the way.”

When asked if it would have been possible not to enter Syria, she replied: “I think so, yes. But I think my friends and the smuggler would have pushed me to keep going. And at that moment I was so afraid of being arrested and going to jail.’

Begum also describes the process of crossing the Syrian border as “simple”.

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In the second episode of I’m Not a Monster: The Shamima Begum Story, Baker tells the story of Begum from Turkey to Syria.

Presenter and local journalist Zeynep Bilginsoy begins at a bus station in Istanbul, where the Londoner and her two friends meet a smuggler, allegedly Mohammed Al Rasheed.

Of her onward journey she says: “We sat on the bus for half a day, then got off and got into a few cars and changed seven times before we reached the border.

“At certain points we also got separated and we wondered what was going on. A lot of adrenaline shot through us.”

When they reached the border, she recalls, “Syrian men were waiting for us to help carry our bags and the smuggler ordered us to cross the border with them. It was very easy.’

Baker and Bilginsoy track down a taxi she took across Turkey, but the driver refuses to talk to them.

They then try to talk to people smugglers and in a cold exchange a gang member asks the couple for money and if they ignore his request they threaten to “disappear”.

In the second episode of I’m Not a Monster: The Shamima Begum Story, host Joshua Baker tells the story of Begum from Turkey to Syria. In the photo: Begum with her friends Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana at Istanbul Bus Station

Baker later receives a secret memo about Mohammed Al Rasheed – the ISIS smuggler and Canadian spy accused of smuggling Begum and her two friends to Syria – warning to “be careful” because it could “embarrass powerful people cause”.

The BBC has come under fire for giving Begum a 10-part podcast claiming she is different from what people perceive her to be.

It is clear that the BBC did not pay her any money for her participation in the series.

But critics argue that the company should not give her the “oxygen” of publicity, fearing it could “twist” a “sob story” and use it as a PR opportunity.

The campaign group TaxPayers’ Alliance said in a social media post that BBC royalties “should not support this outrageous PR exercise to twist an Isis bride’s sob story”.

The BBC insisted that the series was “not a platform for Shamima Begum to tell her undisputed story”, but a “robust public interest investigation”.

In 2015, Begum (centre), then 15, Sultana (left), 15, and Abase (right), 16, fled their homes in East London to join ISIS. Her two companions are believed to have died there

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The BBC said the series was “not a platform for Shamima Begum to tell her undisputed story” but a “robust public interest investigation”.

In the opening episode, she claims, “I’m not that person that you think the media sees me as, you know, I’m so much more than ISIS and I’m so much more than anything I’ve been through.”

She also talks about going to Syria to join the terrorist group, and says she packed mint chocolate because you couldn’t get it in that country.

In another passage, Begum says that when people think of Isis, “they think of me because I was in the media so much.” The other two girls who joined her – who also attended Bethnal Green Academy – were Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana.

The podcast explores how Begum came to Syria and what she did when she arrived.