Kimberly Gwen Polman is a dual Canadian-U.S. citizen, who traveled to Daeshoccupied territory in 2015, and married an Islamic militant she had befriended online. In 2019, after she surrendered to forces allied to the United States, Polman told reporters she deeply regretted her actions.
Early life
Polman's mother is American, and her fatherCanadian. She was raised as a Reformed Mennonite, but later converted to Islam. In 2011, the Soroptimist International issued her a Women's Opportunity Award. Her citation said she was working on a diploma in Legal Administration, and planned to work as a children's advocate.
Polman had taken an interest in nursing, and her online penpal, who said his name was Abu Aymen, told her that her nursing skills were needed in the caliphate. The two later married. In early 2015, Polman travelled from Vancouver to Istanbul on her US passport. She told her family that she was going toAustria for two weeks. Polman says she had grown disenchanted with Daesh by 2016, and tried to escape. She says she was captured, and imprisoned, in Raqqa, where she endured brutal interrogation and rape. Polman is currently being held in the al-Hawl refugee camp in Syria, where she is held with New Jersey-born Hoda Muthana. Polman left three adult children in Canada when she traveled to Istanbul. Polman's siblings told The New York Times that she had a hard life, and that they had been unable to help her. Howard Eisenberg, an immigration lawyer in Polman's home town, told local reporters for CHCH-TV that he anticipates her struggle to return to Hamilton to be a long one. Ian Austen, one of The New York Times Canadian correspondents wrote about Polman, after discussing her with Rukmini Callimachi, The New York Times reporter who first found her, in the refugee camp in Syria. He wrote that Callimachi speculated that she first identified herself as a Canadian to her American captors because she would be treated more leniently, as a Canadian, only to realize that Canadians were "in limbo". Callamachi speculated that Polman started to identify as an American when she realized that while Americans might face prosecution upon repatriation, at least they were being repatriated. Polman's case was one profiled in a study by the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism, as to whether individuals had been recruited to join ISIS solely through online coaching. Her interviews revealed she was lonely and vulnerable following a brutal gang-rape left her alienated from her children and community. She believed her recruiter who promised her she could restore her honour, and purity, if only she came to Daesh to volunteer her nursing skills.
