A French Muslim woman who joined the Islamic State jihadist group (ISIS) in Syria has reportedly fled to Turkey with her young son, after Kurdish fighters help smuggle her to safety from Islamist-held territory.
The as-yet unconfirmed report was revealed by an anti-ISIS Syrian activist operating inside the terror group's self-proclaimed "caliphate" state.
"Abu Ward Al-Raqqawi" posted a picture of the unnamed woman and her child on Sunday. The image is emblazoned with the logo of the Raqqa Revolutionaries' Brigade (Liwa Thuwwar al-Raqqa in Arabic), a rebel group currently believed to be taking part in a clandestine insurgency against ISIS.
The woman is seen holding a piece of paper thanking the Brigade "for saving me from ISIS." She was reportedly transported from ISIS territory into the Kurdish autonomous region in Syria, and from there taken across the Turkish border with the aid of the Kurdish People's Protection Unit (YPG), which itself is fighting a bloody war against ISIS.
Al-Raqqawi is the pseudonym for one of the founders of the "Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently" activist collective. The group - named after the once overwhelmingly secular de-facto capital of Islamic State, Raqqa - has taken up the perilous task of documenting and exposing ISIS crimes.
In February for example, the group revealed that ISIS had held public screenings of the burning to death of a Jordanian pilot.
They have also produced several hidden camera documentaries of life under harsh Islamic rule.
Scores of European Muslim women - some of them recent converts - have traveled to Syria to become "jihadi brides" for ISIS fighters. They are part of the influx of thousands of Muslims from western countries who have joined the group.
But a growing number of reports suggest many ISIS recruits are looking for a way out, having realized the harsh and brutal reality of life in the Islamist terror group stands in sharp contrast to the romanticized portrayals of it on social media and in the group's own slick propaganda.
However, most of those who attempt to leave the group are not as fortunate as this French recruit. Suspected deserters are routinely executed, usually after having been branded as spies for foreign intelligence agencies or for the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.
That is what relatives of an Israeli Arab man executed by ISIS claim happened to him.
19-year-old Mohammed Said Ismail Musallam's videotaped execution was released in March of this year, after the group accused him of being a Mossad spy. His family say he simply got cold feet and had been caught attempting to return home