I’m Not a Monster opens with a call between a British journalist and a mother from Indiana. The line is poor and, when the woman speaks, we hear shouting in the background. It becomes clear that she is speaking from prison. Everything she has done has been for her family, she insists, adding: “I am not a bad person. I am not a monster.”
Hosted by the journalist Joshua Baker, and written with Joe Kent, the series tells the story of how Sam Sally ended up at the centre of the Isis caliphate in Raqqa, Syria. While her husband, Moussa Elhassani, became a sniper for Isis, her 10-year-old son, Matthew, featured in a propaganda video that was seen around the world. Baker plays a clip of it here and it is chilling.
Four years in the making, I’m Not a Monster is a joint enterprise between the BBC’s Panorama series and the US network, Frontline PBS. The reporting is tense and gripping, and the story worthy of a dark Hollywood thriller. Baker explains that he had his…