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Pamela Engel

A woman who writes for a news magazine in Paris went undercover as a young Muslim convert to infiltrate the Islamic State's online network of jihadists looking for brides. "Anna Erelle" (not her real name) talked to The Sunday Times of London about how she got involved with a top ISIS militant. It's unclear whether the Times independently verified her story.

Erelle told the Times that she created fake social media accounts and posed as "Melodie" online to find out first-hand how young girls are lured to join ISIS' ranks in the Middle East as "jihadi brides." She said she had previously interviewed some of these girls during her work as a journalist.

"They knew very little about religion. They had hardly read a book and they learnt jihad before religion," Erelle told the Times. "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."